Pro IITian

  Ways to develop the most productive desk setup Today I will be sharing some of the ways in which you can set up your work desk to increase your productivity. Yes, you heard it right, the desk setup definitely makes an impact on your productivity and hence we shall make full use of it to help us increase our productivity instead of hampering it. Get rid of the non-essential items We generally tend to keep a lot of things on our desk thinking that we might need that particular item at some point in time but we find it taking unnecessary large space and it doesn't get used as frequently. So, one of the first things we can do to clean our desk is to keep only the essential items on the table/desk so that we are always occupied by what's necessary. Things that are essential may include - Your laptop, computer, keyboard, mouse Water bottle Table lamp Pens in a pen stand A tiny plant (have been considered an element to boost productivity) Things that you should get rid of from your ...

 Balance your life with your job Job is an essential part of life as it provides the means to your daily requirements. It is very important as it decides what kind of life you are living, what your status is in your society, and what you do to provide value to the world. Having said all that, the job is not your life. Each and everyone must have a healthy work-life balance and enjoy life and perform well in your job. I am listing a few elements in my daily life that help me live my life to the best and do my job happily. The addition of these elements in your life will change it gradually to a much better state of living. Separating work from life One of the most crucial parts of balancing and living your life happily is to separate your work from life. In today's world of computers and online working, it easy to mix up your life with work. This results in your work being in short stretches of time and taking up your whole day leaving you busy for the entire day and not having a lo...

 This post will try to give an idea about the pay structure / package / CTC of an employee in a High Frequency Trading Firm (HFT) in India. The overall CTC of HFTs easily exceeds the CTC of software firms in india (Google India, Microsoft India, Adobe India etc) The major roles that these companies hire for and their corresponding pay structure is given below- Quant Trader / Quant Researcher / Strategist -  This is the highest paying role in an HFT. Their role comprises of making strategies for the market and actually executing these in the market to make money. Their work is very hectic and their performance affects the company directlly and on a major scale. Their pay structure / CTC usually comprises of the following components - Base -   This is the base pay for the role. This number divided by 12 months is what the trader actually gets each month as the base salary. This comprises of about 60-70 percent of the CTC for a fresher and around 10-20 percent of the CT...

  HFT strategy profitability depends on two factors: latency and competition (i.e. the number of robots taking advantage of the same alpha). If you are lucky to be the only one who uses the alpha you do not have to care much about the latency. If there is at least one more robot on this alpha you only make money (or make more money) if you are faster. The more competitors you have the more important the latency factor. Mathematically this functional connection can be expressed as follows: latency*concurrence= const Trading infrastructure considerably affects the trading results because it is there the latency provided. The latency is made up of the following parameters: a) Market data propagation time from the data source to the server running the trading platform and the strategy. Delay in the channels matters if the market data is sourced from other exchanges. b) The time that elapses between data packet delivery to the network adapter and data delivery to the application. The ...

The greatest demand in the HFT space is for Quantitative Developers. These developers have strong programming skills and strong quantitative skills. A degree in Financial Engineering is helpful but degrees in CS, Economics, Math, Physics and Statistics will also be strongly considered. There are a few key areas of evaluation. 1. How you program: Are you strong in developing efficient real-time, multi-threaded, OO Code. Take note that you will get questions on Algorithms, design and how efficient your code is. 2. How do you think: The focus here is often to present problems that you should not be familiar with to better understand how you think. Are you logical in your approach, do you focus on the right aspects of the problems. Are you creative or linear in your solution. 3. How do you communicate: The evaluation on communication skills are the most subjective part of the meeting. You must ask good questions. If you are spewing out too much information with out asking questions then yo...

    This is one of the most common doubts people studying in the premier institutes have when the placement season approaches. Apart from the obvious difference in the work, there is a difference in their pay as well as a difference in the work timings and flexibility. About Me I have done my B Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay. I too faced a similar dilemma and chose to finally go with doing a job in an HFT. Work culture The work in HFTs is hectic if we compare it to software companies but it’s interesting too. It’s a fast-paced industry and you are required to work quickly on things that the company wants to be done in order to reach its goals. You are required to give a lot of time to some ongoing problem that the team faces in trading which might be hampering live trading. And once the team finds a solution, it is brought into production rapidly. Comparing this with the work in a typical software firm, you are generally assigned some tasks with their...

Brief introduction I am a B Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay. I wanted to explore and work in an HFT so I did my research about the HFT firms in India. I have hereby compiled a list of top HFT firms in India. I have also written a post that explains the pay structure and CTC of the HFTs in India .  Top HFT Firms in India Tower Research (Gurgaon) Quadeye (Gurgaon) Graviton Research (Gurgaon) APT Portfolio  (Delhi) Worldquant LLC (Mumbai) Mathysis (Gurgaon) Alphagrep (Gurgaon) Goldman Sachs (Bangalore/Mumbai) Two Roads Tech (Bangalore) Morgan Stanley (Mumbai) Dolat Group (Mumbai) Estee Advisors (Gurgaon) Edelweiss (Mumbai) Open Futures (Delhi) iRageCapital (Mumbai) Only the first 8 of the above list control the major market share. HFTs in India have not been for a long time but they are expanding fast which is giving new opportunities to build companies in this segment. There is little competition if we compare it to US , UK and other major exchanges arou...