I always get a lot of question asking how someone becomes a trader. The truth is that there is no simple answer, it is a combination of education, ability, personality, drive & luck. I’ll quickly go over them below:
Education
At a minimum a University Bachelor in Commerce/Economics and preferably some industry courses. All the large institutions recruit at the major Universities in September for positions beginning after graduation in June/Aug. There are usually two types of positions, Analyst & Associate. Analyst is for Undergrads and Associates for MBAs. Read more
Another day, another round of layoffs at an investment bank. Today’s casualties are the employees of UBS AG, a Swiss based bank that has come onto hard times.
The firm’s investment banking division lost $17.3 billion in the first quarter. You can bet that the majority of job cuts will be from that division.
The 5,550 jobs represent about 7% of UBS’s 83,800 worldwide employees. That number is actually less than the rumored 10% cut that was floating around the market yesterday.
This newest round of layoffs brings the total reductions in the industry to over 53,000 since this whole mess began. There is still no sign that the credit market has turned around, so expect more cuts to come during the next few months.
US Non-Farm payrolls came in at -20,000 jobs for April. The consensus was -80,000, matching the previous numbers for March.
Translation from EconoSpeak™ to regular English: The US economy had fewer layoffs for jobs that don’t involve working on a farm, the government or a private house, for the month of April than those in the towers of Wall Street expected. The data represents 80% of the workforce involved in the economy.
This is different from the job numbers from yesterday, where a private firm announced its research on announced layoffs. Yesterday’s data was far less broad, and focused on only announced cuts and primarily in the financial sector.
What does this all mean?
Well, it’s good that the numbers beat expectations, although this is the longest string of consecutive declines since Feb-June 2003. So there are pluses and minuses. The data will definitely add fuel to the camp who believe that we are near the end of the downturn, and that recovery is on the way. (via U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
“Job cuts announced by U.S. employers increased 27 percent in April from a year earlier, reflecting the crisis in financial markets, according to a report by a private placement firm.
Firing announcements rose to 90,015 last month, the most since September 2006, from 70,672 in April 2007, Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said in a statement today.” (Via Bloomberg)
There is no real surprise here. Financial firms are the hardest hit by the “Credit Crunch™” and have been announcing layoffs for the past few weeks. These jobs are very cyclical and workers are usually aware of the risk as the downside to the high salary.
If we begin seeing big increases in layoffs in core industies like manufacturing and retail, then there will be cause for alarm.
Taking a look at this morning’s headlines:
US home foreclosures are up 57%
Oil is at a record high of $112.
Corn & Rice futures are at record levels trading in Chicago.
Now I don’t want to sound like Mr. Negative and scare you, but things aren’t exactly looking too good for the US Economy. The US Dollar stinks, interest rates are low (this is good for people with loans, but foreign investors like high interest rates), and commodity prices are rising.
The most important thing that people should now be paying attention to are JOBS.
