I am a senior macro trader on the buy-side. I’ve held senior roles at leading banks and have worked for multistrategy hedge funds. I have also interviewed a lot of students who want to be traders.
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In doing so, I have noticed that they repeatedly make the same mistakes. Once a student makes it through the HR interview and is actually talking to the desk, they will almost always start talking about all the risk they’ve taken in their own investments.
I often encounter students who tell me about their multi-hundred % returns and their crypto wins. They seem to think that this is what I am looking for.
They are wrong.
I don’t want to hire people who take a lot of risk. I want to hire people who are prudent, with a selective risk appetite and sensible targets.
I am interested in people willing to run a marathon, not sprint heroically in search of quick profits.
Students don’t seem to understand this.
When young people in interviews say they make 20-50-100% returns, it’s a red flag. Most of the instruments we trade move by 1-2% intraday.
Our worry, therefore, is that young people accustomed to crypto volatility will struggle on an institutional trading desk. Their sizing adjustment will be too much of an expensive lesson to learn.
What we are looking for is not people with big crypto wins. We want people with completely psychological and emotional control, who can take large notionals of risk with very prudent and tight management.
Please remember this next time you boast of your 400% bitcoin returns.
Ewan Rogers is a pseudonym
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