Who makes millions on wallstreet?

Hi,

Just a random question. Hoping some of u guys may have the knowledge to it.

I was just looking at finance as a job or career. And apparently for most of the case if u look on career builders or through a recruiter for analyst, trader, consultant, etc position...u get get paid a decesent income and a descent bonus.

However, sometimes when u look on bloomberg they'll mention stuff about wallstreet where some trader or banker have base salaries or bonuses in millions. My question is where can I find a job like that versus the average finance job?

don't know the answer but I guess the answer would be,

if you want to make millions from a job, you need to aim at being able to bring tens of millions of profits to your customer. (definitely real prof, not fake one) and you need to be able to consistently bringing that value.

and that is hard work as well as oppotunity needed.

Those types of jobs find you, you don't find them. Or you know someone who will give you a run (relatives).

go to harvard business school and you'll probably be good enough or make the necessary contacts to get a job like that.

without a degree you have no chance and no matter what anyone says thats the bitter truth

hi,

if you don't know any body of stature in the industry. then you got to work your way up. be visible to the top echelons in your workplace. make them like you, so that when there's a great opportunity, they'll think of you.

be a great seller of the bank's products. work so hard that you can become ceo of a bank in your forties. then if you want a early retirement, do something stupid for the bank. get on the press and get a hefty payout of 50million and up for leaving the bank in disgrace. but live happily ever after with your millions.

Actually I'm pretty sure it's not always the top students from schools like harvard who get there. Instead, it's the C+ students who have always had their noses in trading and not in the law books.

If you want to get one of those "dream jobs" with the millions of dollars in base salary + bonus, be prepared to work 15+ hour days plus weekends. Those jobs you see on bloomberg are not entry-level jobs. They usually require a very strong track record of making money.

Thing about wall street is that they don't care what your degree is. They only care about how much money you can make the firm. I'm a college freshman now, but I've worked for a wall street firm for 3 years. (Full time summers, part time year round). I started the summer after my sophomore year in high school, and I was placed with a batch of college juniors and seniors from name brand schools, Harvard, MIT, UPenn, NYU, you name it. I beat them handily. Why?

1. I was working at my desk on the trading floor for upwards of 13 hours a day. (6AM to 7PM)
2. I am so efficient at my work that I can finish anything they threw at me in less than half the time it took the other interns.
3. The other interns were only there from 9-5, and even then took several breaks and long lunches in between.
4. They couldn't adapt fast enough to the work environment. They had this idea that whatever theories their professors taught them were carved in stone and unbreakable.
5. I was far cheaper to hire than they were.

As for how I got in, I have to say that it was definitely through a back door. See, I met the boss' wife in one of my dance classes. My boss doesn't like to dance, despite his wife's urging. We danced regularly together and my boss didn't mind too much because his wife was happy and probably not nagging him too much. We became good friends and I struck up the nerve to ask for a favor--an internship--and I got it.


If you want to get into wall street, you need one of two things:

1. Connections
2. Good reputation for making money

Although, if you had #2, you probably wouldn't be looking for a job anyway.


Just my thoughts

well if you read market wizards or the new market wizards you'll see most of them have fancy degrees Ed seykota, Victor Niderhoffer, Munroe Trout blah blah blah so and and so forth. Thats the norm, now there are a few in the book who are street smart but they're the exception not the norm. To think you or one of us here would be an exception is being naive.

I'm in the same boat as you but I do have same insight as to how it works my sisters a graduate from the LSE and a PhD from Cambridge. Scholarship btw, we dont have that much money lol. She keeps om telling me about the hiring process and how seniors from her college who are already high up the corporate ladder try to pull up or prefer their own kind Cambridge/Oxford/London business school types.

I know what I'm saying sounds cruel to all of us in here including myself but its the truth guys even if we'd like to think otherwise. I wish it were'nt so.

Just look at the top jobs in wallstreet or any other major corp say citibank, GM, Merryil Lynch .......

RR if you've made some money in trading spend it and get your ass to Harvard you're still young, you might laugh at what I'm saying now but you'll understand and appreciate what I'm saying later in life.

Its much better to be the norm than the exception and as I said thinking all of us folks in here are the exception and can make it is just paranoid delusion. Some of us may but most wont whereas most of the ivy leagues will and some wont.

I dont mean to sound cruel or arogant or anything like that guys but this is just the way it is.

Makes alot of sense

I'm actually shooting for UPenn. I was waitlisted and ultimately denied last year, but we'll see. I should be getting a response next month or so. See, UPenn is the only ivy league school with an undergraduate business degree.

I think the main difference between me and any other financial hopeful is that I have a fairly modest list of contacts in wall street who were not affected by the subprime collapse. A little list I'm trying to leverage to get me into UPenn.

Why would you want to work for someone else in the first place? You are trading. If you are any good then you should be able to make a million dollars in a couple of years. Just apply the right leverage at the right place at the right time. In Forex, the opportunities are there every day.

I'll be brief. After 17 years in financial services, the answer to the millions in your pocket is easy. You get paid on wall street and most private businesses what you are worth to the company, and you have to be worth tens of millions to the company for them to pay you a million. So you have to bring in tens of millions of dollars worth of new business every year and sell high profit products that makes your company big money. And the only way to do that as a newbie is to have a roledex with 500 or so rich friends and family who would trust a new person with their money. Watch the movie "the pursuit of happyness". And since you don't know how the wall street guys do it, my guess is you don't (and 99.5% of us) have those kinds of friends. Find another career like I am doing, as I am getting out of the business. You have the answer right here with trading. Do any job and practice trading, and in 5 years or so you will be on your way to wealth and you will net more money than they have on wall street. Remember it is all about net income.