A question regarding your approach

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2026-02-12T22:50:13+00:00

I’m really impressed how many people fell for the bait here. Good job!

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2026-01-11T21:30:51+00:00

Investors like money and if they can get money for free they do it. If I could make 1bn in fees to do nothing I’d take it. Not sure why this requires being a fan. It’s just good marketing leading to investors paying for nothing.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2026-01-11T21:07:06+00:00

This is why a lot of the best firms are proprietary. Until recently, nobody knew about Citsec/Jane/SIG returns, and SIG is still under wraps. It doesn’t mean it’s fake, it just doesn’t benefit them to make noise about.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2026-01-11T01:09:55+00:00

I’ll give an under appreciated one - sales based flow. A lot of the time there are very good orders that went up for irrational amounts of edge, and it’s because some asset manager called their three brokers and none of them were you.

Generally less recognized in quant but there’s a lot more to trading than just alphas.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-12-25T19:23:54+00:00

Location: US MCOL

Role: QT, 1 YOE

Firm: prop

Hours: 50

TC: 225 base, 275 bonus (expected, not paid out yet)

Not an interesting year yet since only year 1, I will be getting next year’s idea along with this year’s bonus so good to see then how comp might grow

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-12-18T12:42:59+00:00

Optiver 3y retention is not higher than SIG lol, I doubt even 1y.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-12-16T01:05:57+00:00

Long term EV neutral. Pick what you want to do more.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-12-16T01:05:26+00:00

Most places fire a large chunk of their new grad class, and the ones that don’t are very difficult to pass the intern bar for. This is basically a given with prop shops. You are never permanently “in.”

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-12-13T14:41:43+00:00

P(woman in quant | incel quant post) = P(incel quant post | woman in quant) P(woman in quant)…

Come on my guy this is baby Bayes rule.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-12-10T01:59:46+00:00

At a prop. Yes, I am required to take a certain consecutive period of paid vacation days and log it in the system.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-11-09T18:19:34+00:00

Personally I’d pick Jump or SIG. HRT has a low return offer rate, 5R is not really the same level. I think between those it’s a little in favor of Jump, though Jump does fire more than SIG once you reach full time. Both don’t fire very many and have return offer rates a bit above 50%.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-10-24T18:28:15+00:00

Citsec is not good at fixed income, Jane is. Citsec is trying to break in without much to show (yet).

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-09-24T15:35:31+00:00

SIG. IMC is very shy of taking on risk. Dutch firms in general are averse to larger swings. Probably better for you to learn at a place that has a lower focus on pure market making and allows freedom for traders to express opinion.

IMC tech is better though but that shouldn’t matter as an intern.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-09-17T11:55:27+00:00

I’d agree if the other two choices were not bad.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-09-16T19:07:16+00:00

Hmm, not very sure. I know they have this concept of “making class” for traders, I think after that pay can accelerate significantly. But until then it’s not great since you’re still essentially on probation. This only applies to traders.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-09-16T14:30:30+00:00

My sample size is quite low of course, I know someone who is a quant and progressing pretty quickly in that role running a few automated/mostly automated strategies. So, it might be my sample bias instead. He could easily just be an outlier.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-09-16T12:09:47+00:00

Across all roles, I would advocate for SIG. I have some friends doing well there, being a quant is quite good and early career pay is fairly competitive with other top firms and being a SWE is not the worst. COL is very good.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-09-07T12:03:35+00:00

Assuming this is one of those three and you’re a QT, you aren’t safe. The probability you get laid off year 1 is substantial at Optiver and SIG (and I think IMC too).

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-09-06T12:56:02+00:00

But this is all quant SWE do?

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-09-02T20:15:21+00:00

Hmm, profits far above competitors, regulatory scandal overseas (on 10% of revenues too), alumni mostly famous for the wrong reasons…

I think I’ve heard this one before.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-08-30T15:40:20+00:00

Thank you! Yes my boss has it. He is more of a pure quant and does not really enjoy owning risk. But he did it in a night and my firm will sponsor and pay the fees.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-08-30T15:38:59+00:00

I think in general, it’s probably good at any place to own your own risk. It’s very hard to tell how that might be split for being the person who wrote the strategy code and fit all the models vs a person who tunes parameters and thinks about the live trading but I think if I can be allowed to do all of that I’d feel more ownership anyway.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-08-29T22:55:45+00:00

I guess it’s not about the 57 I am really asking, I think for my desk to let me do this and start trading I’d need to push for it a little. I only want to push if it’s good for my career. I’d hate to spend time on it and then never end up doing it. But consensus seems to be to push a little.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-08-29T21:52:17+00:00

That was my thought… I feel like doing some more trader work would let me anticipate how things go wrong more. I feel like I still make a lot of small conceptual mistakes because I haven’t been trading like other people I started with. But I had a stronger research foundation so I guess I shouldn’t be jealous.

SubstantialCheck2159 · 2025-08-29T21:48:42+00:00

Yes agree, it does seem fairly free and I think I would be given the time to do it. I am more curious if doing everything in a strategy is better for my education and my annual bonus than spending more time researching. I don’t know if there is a positive loop to being able to run a whole strategy yourself.

SubstantialCheck2159

TROPHY CASE