Do I need to Know how to Code to be a trader?
The topic title says it all. Is this really a necessary skill to learn to be a trade nowadays, or are there other skills that are equally, or more important to know?
Thanks in advance guys.
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This shouldn't even be asked. Yes you need to know how to code... I don't understand why it's so hard to just pick up a book or learn online. Is it pure laziness?
Ask yourself this? If you were a senior trader or a desk head and you had to choose someone who knew how to code and someone who didn’t... same education background... both had no trading knowledge.... who would you pick?
Do you actually do coding for trading in S&T?
Trading is not just pressing a button to buy 1000 units of something. At least on the execution trading desk lots of time is spent on sending and receiving trade information from clients and back office. Usually the data is saved in Excel files that are processed at the desk with VBA code. This VBA code (at that particular bank) was coded by the traders themselves.
There are also other things most traders would prefer to automate. During the internship I wrote VBA code to calculate the net hedging exposure per client because it took a trader 20 minutes to calculate that by hand every morning.
Is Python the main one to learn and is VBA next after that?
I did an internship earlier this year on the trading floor of a European IB. It was VBA all the way. I've heard that other banks are already holding coding lessons in Python but can't say anything about that.
It's not laziness. I just was wondering, thanks for input
It’s moving towards that but it certainly isn’t a requirement as of yet. I would say maybe 50% of my intern class knew some coding. Some hadn’t even used excel before.
With that said, this is true at the intern level. To break in once you’re out is probably harder and would require a different set of skillsets. But it all depends on the desk, particularly what the head of the desk is looking for.
Alright, let me make this clear for everyone. You NEED to learn how to code. No you're not expected to be a quant but banks want traders to be self efficient. Banks want to bridge the gap of traders only trading. They want traders to understand how to fix shit if a spreadsheet or a system goes down instead of always relying on tech. The reason why you need to learn python is because there will be projects you need to take on or maybe you want to interpret data. Whatever it may be. Traders at my desk are learning programming right now. When I interview for a senior trader for a bank, python was hugely emphasised and also the place I am at now too.
Just an FYI... Don't listen ASUgrad2017... Kid graduated two years ago and thinks he knows everything and giving me dogshit.
don't take everything so personal my man. We're both welcome to our own opinions and I even agreed with you that learning it can't hurt.
Depends on the type of shop you are trading at
Do you use code in commodities trading ?
Like I said, it will vary greatly dependent on shop strategy. I know a lot of traders who don't know how to code but depend on analysts/quant teams to automate/fix a lot of sheets with semi-basic VBA.
Let's keep it forward looking instead of thinking about now. If you really want to help these kids prepare for the future, just say yes.
It definitely can't hurt to learn. But if you want to answer the question honestly- the answer is it depends on product & shop. I fully believe there are upcoming traders in certain products/shops/strategies that won't need to know how to code (Bring on the MS from all the "trading is dying and going only to algos" people).
This isn't about trading going all algo. This is about being a better candidate and having a higher chance of getting hired. Do I trade using Algos? Yes. All of my market making is done with algos. But I trade discretionary too and the reason why is because it's very very hard to put your discretionary strategy into algos because of its limitation. Algos can't think like a trader, it's binary. Personally, developers and algos are useless without a trader implementin the strategy. And this is where developer and traders clash. For example, you can't tell an algo... Hey if its at this level buy but only a little bit but sell atthis point of the curve at this level but only if the indicator shows here... it's so complicated
I would said majority of my spec traders are discretionary unless I'm arbing. I would never spec without algos because I just don't trust it. Shit blows up and you have fucking 1000 lots on and you're really fucked.
Depends on which language are you talking about mate and what kind of trader would you want to be. If you want to be quant then sure you need it. C++ and C# will be super useful and if you want to take it a step further then go on to learn Julia or F#.
On the other hand if you are not really looking at a Quant role then not needing to know coding is "technically the truth". Why not learn to code, handicapping yourself in the process, since we are moving in that direction? Python is an easy programming language to learn and is super useful. You can do a multitude of stuff on it and knowing it can give you a significant advantage.
Knowing VBA is a minimum.
PS. If you are still at school there's really no reason to not pick up both VBA & Python given the relatively small time investment required for the big potential upside.
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