Day in the life of a Quant Trader in HFT (India)
In the post, I am going to describe a day in my life (on a workday). I am currently working as a Quant Trader in a High-Frequency Trading Firm in India. The work of other Quant Traders in other companies is also on the same lines as mine. I have done my B Tech from IIT Bombay in Computer Science and Engineering department. I joined this HFT after college and continuing to work there currently.
(If you want to know about the pay structure and CTC of a Quant Trader and other roles in a HFT in India, visit https://prolivify.blogspot.com/2021/07/pay-structure-ctc-in-high-frequency.html)
Day Start
I am currently trading in Indian markets whose timings are 9:15 AM to 3:30 PM. This means I have to wake up early and finish my morning routine and breakfast before starting work since I won't be getting time for anything else once the market starts.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we are operating virtually in work from home mode and that's why my time is not wasted in travelling as of now.
I get ready for work around or before 9 AM. I and my team members then proceed to start all the strategies on time so that they are ready before the market start.
Market Start
Once the market starts, it becomes too busy. During this time, we have to control our risks very actively since the markets might have moved overnight. Also, this is the time when we have to check if everything is running as expected and nothing has crashed or stopped. Then our work is mostly to point out if anything out of the ordinary happens in our strategy or market and we try to control our risks if the markets move only in one direction and we are left with a large position.
During the Market Hours
During the market hours, the task for the traders is to mostly look after the strategy, if it's working/ running fine or not and if any trades have some issue with it or it was executed even if we didn't want. We also look after our alphas and if they are performing well in the market. Most of our time is spent analysing the market and tuning our parameters accordingly.
Market End
This is also a very crucial time as we have to close our positions if any in the market. We are also aware of the news and anything that might affect the market before the next day's start so we take our positions accordingly if we want.
Although the market ends at 3:30 PM, our day doesn't. We then go for lunch if not done during market hours and then continue with the data analysing part of the day. We have the day's data and various reports which give us insights into the trading that happened on that day. We look and carefully figure out what went wrong (if something went wrong) and how could we improve it by incorporating changes in the current strategy. Then we also do our research projects or development tasks assigned for us.
Day End
After our work is done for the day which is mostly data analysing and strategy improvement and development tasks, we call it a day and do some other interesting things in our life.
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