at least they dare to dream and try to be successful. better than those after wasting 20 years of studying first thing is to hide in some civil servant paper pusher job till retire.

Lots are not adding to the OP's question so I try to give a few comments.

A few sides to the story actually. One side is that you can get in purely by qualifications. But you need to be at the top of your cohort. What would help is personality. In trading, the desk wants to know whether they can sit next to you and watch markets for 9 hours a day. You cannot be a irritant. It's good to be likeable.

So what would top of your game with personality mean? Top Ivy League US school, > 3.8 GPA, team leader of some sports team or club and know the basics of bid ask spread, forwards, contract, delta hedging. Is that you?

The other side is that yes, as someone mentioned, connections does help in this line. Say I started on the sell side and occsionally met up with this oil execution trader friend every month. We got to know each other, talked markets. Then when the team the oil trader is in is looking to bring in someone new, my friend may look to have me on board because 1) we click and 2) I know enough of the market to trade.

There's also one last avenue. Track record. At the very best, track record trumps qualifications and personality. The problem is that how will you be defining your track record? Opening S$10k on Phillips Futures doesn't work. Telling them of your deals as a market maker might help but hard if the company you're going to seeks alpha as there isn't a direct link between making markets and predicting broad price trends. Now, if you said that you managed a pool of cash from your family of friends amounting to S$500k and got a 7% return, they'll listen.

So try to work on any of these three - top qualifications with a personality, connections or a respectable track record.

For those new to the field, trading is broadly categorized as sell-side and buy-side. Sell-side is the market, they make the market and they profit from matching buy and sell orders. Buy-side are investors who buy something cheap and then sell it high.

I can't categorically say you are wrong (world is big after all), but what you have described seems to be in a completely different world based on my understanding having worked as a bunker broker and interacted with traders directly in Singapore before.

First of all, I've never heard of the requirement that you need to be in Ivy League with minimal 3.8GPA or even more bizarrely some sort of sports team leader in order to be a bunker trader.

Secondly that comment about getting S$500k from your family to demonstrate you can make a 7% return in order to impress your employers sounds out of the world. I have never heard of anyone getting into bunker trading this way. I don't even see how making 7% on your family's money has anything to do with bunker trading nor can I see how this is supposed to impress anyone.

The last point that Buy-side are investors who buy something cheap and then sell it high is not accurate as there are many ways to trade the market besides buy cheap sell high, that may be more accurate to describe a value based mutual fund.

Arbitrage, short selling, hedge away risk with options, high frequency trading, trading around economic announcements, global trends, synthetic positions - two options to form a stock and see whether its mispriced against the actual stock, long forward short underlying to get exposed to interest rates ...

Yes, I know there're tons of ways to make money. I just said buy low and sell high to very simply illustrate that function against what a market maker does.

You are confusing normal financial trading with bunker fuel trading. Don't anyhow advise if you don't know the subject.

I am from shipping industry and agree with you. His emphasis on CCA and that nonsense about playing the market using family and friend's money to impress is obvious rubbish.

its a common urban legend that you can use your own money to play the stock market and use this to impress an employer. in real life it will never happen because any trader worth his stock will know that performance measurement and tracking is not so simple just do a print screen of your e-trade brokerage acc showing gains and loses amount. also professional trading is a completely different game with advantages and disadvantages compared to personal punting. most of what works for small amounts of punting for personal pleasure doesnt work in a professional setting.

Okay, I was wrong in confusing financial trading with bunker trading. But I assure you showing a track record of profitable trading to get a job at specific firms is NOT an urban legend. In case I didn't emphasize enough, you'll need to have a very specific track record which a) has a large enough assets b) has consistent success. Which is why I mentioned an example of $500k with a 7% return. Okay, I'll add an additional requirement of 7% over three years.

What does this show? You convince people to trust you with a large sum of money. And you actually turned an plan into a actionable idea in the market by actually investing.

We're NOT talking about some guy blowing up his $500 account five times. We're NOT talking about the guy who just got lucky for five consecutive trades. I agree those are the punters who just needed to guess one interest decision right and their up 20%. Believe me, I've seen it all and I know the difference between trading for personal pleasure and professional trading.

Simply put, the baseline of making 7% for 3 years with a large enough capital of $500 means that this guy isn't the 95% of traders who just guess and gamble in the market. And I agree, this has to be true. So I forget to mentioned that you have to get it audited professionally.

Let's just say I interviewed at a hedge fund ($500m) and a proprietary company for a trader role and both did ask of my personal trading. A mention of $10k, your trades who trade for pleasure, doesn't interest them. Say you have an account of $500k is a different thing.

By your own admission, you confused bunker trading which is the point of this thread with other sorts of trading, i.e. you don't know anything about bunker trading.

Then why are you insisting on advising the TS to get substantial sums of money from his parents and friends to go punt the markets? The ludicrousity of your assertion that generating a 7% p.a over 3 years with $500k will impress hedge fund managers aside, in what way is this advice, even if true, relevant to the TS question?

The TS wants to be a bunker trader now, not a hedge fund manager 3 years down the road.

no sh*t. must borrow 500k to make 7% for 3 years then still must fork out money to hire an auditor all the way.

are us serious or making sh*t up as you go along? u trying to get a simple youngster w/o exp who just wants to find a good paying job into trouble har?