Why I chose quant trading to retire early | Highlights and Annotations by Gistr.

The narrator, a former Lockheed Martin engineer, transitioned to proprietary trading after witnessing a friend's lucrative career in the field. Drawn by the potential for high earnings and the industry's open acknowledgment of profit-seeking, he pursued prop trading, highlighting its intense, high-pressure environment, significant bonuses (especially during market downturns), and unique culture. He describes the work as entrepreneurial, high-risk, and highly rewarding, comparing it to a startup incubator and even a video game. * High Earning Potential: Proprietary trading offers significantly higher earning potential than traditional careers, with the possibility of million-dollar bonuses, especially during market volatility. * Secretive and Competitive Industry: Prop trading firms are often secretive about their operations and compensation, attracting top talent from prestigious universities. The industry is highly competitive. * Risk and Reward: The industry is high-risk, high-reward. Traders own the risk and can be fired for significant losses, but successful traders are handsomely compensated. Bonuses are directly tied to performance. * Faster Path to Wealth: Compared to careers like medicine, prop trading provides a much faster route to accumulating wealth, requiring less time and education. * Intense and Stressful: The work is extremely intense and stressful, demanding long hours and constant focus. Even taking a day off can mean missing significant earning opportunities. * Zero-Sum Game: In options and futures trading, it's a zero-sum game, meaning one trader's profit is another's loss. This creates a competitive and sometimes cutthroat environment. * Entrepreneurial Environment: Each trading desk within a firm can feel like its own startup, fostering an entrepreneurial spirit and emotional investment in performance. * Counter-cyclical Profits: Prop trading firms often profit most during market crashes and periods of high volatility due to inefficient pricing and panic trading by other market participants.