Citadel Securities is a global market making firm, and we provide liquidity across assets in more than 50 markets around the world. I am a fundamental analyst in U.S. single stock options market making team. I look at companies from a fundamental perspective, such as their operating metrics, competitive landscape,., and arrive at a fair value of the stock and the options of this stock. Every day, I try to piece together information to generate insights about a company that can help me identify catalysts that could significantly change the value of the company.
I usually get to work 2 hours before market opens, go over news, events, analyst upgrades/downgrades. If I think some events can move stock, I will state my confidence level, my range, and my time horizon for potential trade. During market hours, I work closely with our traders to support our market making activities. If the fair value of any specific options contract should change, we want to make the adjustment accurately and swiftly. After market closes, I usually work on longer-term projects, usually either data analysis or tool building, that can benefit my and my team’s workflow.
I grew up in Shanghai and came to the United States for high school. I was very interested in science and mathematics, and I ended up in Stanford studying statistics and computer science. In the later stage of my college, I became interested in finance as I wanted to find out how my knowledge in statistics and computer science can be applied in this industry. I interned at an investment bank before joining Citadel Securities full-time. I applied for Citadel Securities in my senior year of college after I figured that I was more interested in public equities. I have been with my current team for a little over a year, and I have really enjoyed my experience so far.
Yes! A lot of what I need to know for doing my job, including knowledge about accounting, finance and various asset classes can be acquired through training. While my background in the quantitative fields is useful, anyone with enough understanding of probabilities and good intuition in strategy setting could thrive in this career.
This is also a job that creates real impact, which gives me an incredible sense of achievement. If you are passionate about making a difference in real life scenarios in this industry, you will be in this job for a long time.
This job allows junior people to take a lot of responsibility from the beginning. You will see your personal impact very quickly, which is really cool. I had a lot of flexibility to choose which projects I wanted to work on when I just joined our desk, and it’s easy to quantify the success of the final products.
This job is not stress free! Our job is all about making the expected value of our actions positive – however, no one can have a 100% hit rate. There will be trades that lose money or ideas that don’t work out, and sometimes we need to manage our emotions well when things do not go our way. I do think being able to learn from mistakes and move on quickly is an acquired skill that’s very important for my continued growth and for not limiting myself to the past.