High Freq. Trading option for a confused EE&CS student.

[yalcin]

Hello to all,

The reason I am posting this question here is because I need an advice from someone who is involved with HFT.

I am an undergraduate junior with a year left to obtain two degrees from Eastern Washington University in Electrical engineering and Computer Science. My goal is to continue on to masters degree with a focus on the area of trading, I am not very sure what it would be considered but I don't think it's Financial Engineering because it seems education/training to be called a HFT engineer or something would be alot more technical.

The reason I am choosing the field is I can see the connection between Signals and Systems, Communication systems and noise filtering, and programming all the theory on to real time data, represent the market as a gaussian noise and generate matched filters,ect.

I discovered some HF traders have EE background but I am not sure how they ended up being one.

First thing is, what area of concentration for a Master degree of Science is best suited for a HF trader?

Or is it better to assume that starting my career as a systems engineer and working some 5+years and getting back into the field of financial engineering is a better path onto becoming a HF trader?

Because I dont want to continue on microelectronics, which is another area of EE. so is it a better choice to be specialized in Digital Signal Processing and Communication and have experience and come back to the field of FE?

Anything you say is appreciated because I'm very lost about this and I need to make a choice soon. Thanks alot!

 

[Connor]

There are always different paths to take. Not I may be wrong but I would be surprised if you could just get a MFE then go straight into HFT. My understanding was that it is very technical.

Looking at the profile of Serge Aleynikov, a programmer at Goldman Sachs that was in the news previously, he had experience working with telecom routing before going into finance. http://www.linkedin.com/in/aleynikov

If you go for a MFE now I imagine you will be able to get a job in finance, but in HFT is no guarantee.

 

[yalcin]

If you go for a MFE now I imagine you will be able to get a job in finance, but in HFT is no guarantee.

This is the way I look at the entry into HFT is as follows; correct me if I'm wrong please. Trading happens in a noisy environment, ie the market, among the other disturbances, the trader is responsible for making desicions based on the market curve of a certain company. So it is much like dsp and communication area. There is a probability of signal energy to noise curve, market behavior is representable as a mathematical system. And the techniques used such as Fourier transforms, convolution, autocorelation, ect. are all applicable. Ultimately the goal of communication is retreiving the data sent through a transmitter. Techniques are all related to the in between process.

That being said, I agree with your quote and in my assumption, I think it is safer to excel academically in the areas of Digital Signal Processing and Communication Systems so that I could have a high chance of entry into the HFT world.

So it boils down to that if one day I can be a seasoned engineer with Comm.&DSP background, and I know how to program very complex systems under environments like MATLAB, C++,JAVA,ect. I can be in a HFT job easily, yes????

 

[Connor]

So it boils down to that if one day I can be a seasoned engineer with Comm.&DSP background, and I know how to program very complex systems under environments like MATLAB, C++,JAVA,ect. I can be in a HFT job easily, yes????

This seems like a decent plan and a fair assumption, but I wouldn't use the word "easily"

 

[joel_b]

It's a better plan to go the Science route if you are quite good at what you're going into. MFE is a very specialized Masters, I don't think people should go for it unless they are very decided about their career. I think it leaves more options open for you.

The entire discipline came about from people like you doing good things in science and wandering into finance, and that trend will continue, so I don't see it as an MFE only type of requirement for those jobs at all.

If you're a good developer then go ahead and build and backtet your own trading systems and prove they work, learn all the issues. Live test it (maybe not HFT, haha). You don't need an MFE to learn how to do all this stuff, you can learn it on your own.