Susquehanna International Group

What’s your background? What did you study?

 I studied Maths and Finance at the University of Sydney.

What inspired you to pursue trading?

I have a university background and interest in both maths and finance, and trading presented a great opportunity to work in a fast-paced environment and a field that applied both. 

What is your favourite thing about SIG?

I enjoy the entrepreneurial approach to trading at SIG. Traders are encouraged to come up with their own ideas and are helped to execute and evaluate them afterwards. 

Additionally, SIG’s focus on the decision-making process and decision science when evaluating trading is very refreshing; it minimises the luck from trading when assessing decisions. 

Finally, good communication is beneficial, there is a lot of benefit to being able to clearly communicate your decision process as well as understanding and react to feedback on the fly.

What does a typical day look like at SIG?

I start my day looking through overnight news alerts and emails from our Equity Research team, with a call one hour before trading with the team to discuss desk-specific events in more detail and do any project work I have. 

From there I would look at market moves in the US and Europe and discuss any trading situations we have on the day with the rest of the desk.

Once the market opens, I am focussed on trading, and we use the HK market lunch break to flag any situations arising and gameplan for the post-lunch session.

After the close, we will have a desk huddle and recap our trading day to send to the rest of the firm. 

Are there any specific skills or qualities that are essential to succeed at trading?

Trading allows for you to both showcase and capitalise on a wide range of skills. You will need a solid knowledge base in maths, including probability and distributions, plus an ability to quickly assess situations. Experience in competitive environments like sports or strategy games, can help an individual thrive in the fast-paced world of trading. 

Furthermore, being generally inquisitive and enjoying assessing and solving complex problems is valuable, as well as an entrepreneurial mindset and an ability to lead projects.

How do you handle the stress of high stakes trading in your job?

While expectations are high at SIG and trading can be stressful by nature, the office culture is supportive rather than piling on pressure to perform.

I find keeping active helps me to relax as well, rock climbing and golf are my sports of choice.

What does typical career progression look like at SIG?

The trading intake starts with 6 months on-desk in Sydney, where you will learn about basic options and trading theory. From there you will join other Quantitative Traders at SIG’s US headquarters for 8-12 months, where you will further your trading education, culminating in SIG’s 10-week trading class. You would then be a junior trader and assigned to a desk. 

What’s your background, what did you study?

I majored in Finance and Economics at university. I’ve worked at SIG for about a year now and have really enjoyed the experience so far!

What sparked your interest in working for a trading firm?

While I was in university, I competed in a lot of stock pitch and business case competitions. I really loved the thrill of competition, the sense of camaraderie, and the process of working in a team to solve complex problems. While I wasn’t sure of the exact career I wanted to pursue, I knew that I wanted to go into a role with those kinds of attributes. When I found out about the type of work in a trading firm, it felt like a great fit for my interests: the fast-paced nature of the work, the collaborative environment, the quick feedback loops, and the interesting problems all really appealed to me.

Tell us about your experience in the equity research program.

The Equity Research Analyst role is all about helping our traders gain an advantage in the markets. We do this in a few ways such as recommending trades on breaking news, determining how information is disseminated, and providing valuation and analysis on situations in the markets. We try to understand what factors are driving price movements and ensure that our opinions are reflected in products that we trade, particularly in options. The program starts off with an education program that covers options theory before working on the desks on research projects and later getting assigned a coverage area of stocks. 

Tell us about a typical day for you.

In the morning when I get to the office, I’ll first catch up on the overnight news flow and send a recap of any impactful news to traders. Before the market opens, we have a discussion on the desk to discuss potential trading ideas that we can action. 

When the market opens, I’ll actively monitor headlines for breaking news that can impact products we trade, as well as respond to any questions traders might come have. Sometimes, a piece of news will break, and we’ll work quickly to understand its implications and act on potential trading opportunities. 

When the market is quieter, I’ll work on projects such as preparing for future events like an earnings announcement or potential catalysts that can affect a company. After the market closes, we’ll reflect on any situations that played out during the day and send out a recap to analysts and traders in our other offices. 

Are there any skills or qualities that are essential to succeed in Research at SIG?

The key qualities essential to succeeding in research at SIG include a strong interest in the markets, the ability to think about problems critically, as well as being curious. It’s also important to be able to learn from mistakes. There will always be times where we miss out on an opportunity, or a trading opinion doesn’t play out as expected, so being able to reflect on how to improve for the future is important.

How would you describe the growth you’ve seen during your time at SIG?

Growth has been quite fast and I continue to learn every day. Research Analysts at SIG are given quite a lot of responsibility from early on, and there is a lot of autonomy and flexibility to work on different projects that interest me. When I joined, I wanted to learn about a lot of different products across many markets, and within my first few months, I was able to work on projects spanning the commodities space, Australia and Hong Kong option strategies, Japanese and Korean equities, and macroeconomic projects. I currently cover equities in the Asia-Pacific region, and really like the fact I can learn about a lot of different industries.

What do you like best about working at SIG?

The culture. People at SIG have a great sense of humour which makes the experience of working here a lot of fun. SIG also has a flat structure, there are no formal titles, and people are very friendly. You can reach out to anyone, and they will be willing to help you. 

What projects and experiences have been most rewarding so far?

I think the most rewarding experiences are the ones that involve analysing a complex trading situation and recommending a trade that works out well. Every situation is different, and it’s always rewarding to see your decisions play out accurately in real time. 

What three pieces of advice would you give to a graduate interviewing at SIG?

1: Keep up to date with what’s going on in the markets – whether it’s through investing in your own account, following news on your favourite companies, or reading news and seeing how it impacts the market.

2: Be inquisitive. Demonstrate your ability to think critically about different pieces of information, to dig deep into problems, and to come up with insights that others might not consider.

3:Being able to get across your ideas clearly and concisely is important on a trading floor – so that’s something that is also important to demonstrate in the interview process.

What’s your background? What did you study?

I took courses in Economics and Mechatronics Engineering at The University of Melbourne. I then studied a joint PhD program between The University of Melbourne and University of Birmingham, where I was affiliated with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments. My research topic specialised in the realm of control engineering and mathematical optimisation. 

What sparked your interest in working for a trading firm over Academia?

Reflecting on my academic background, a common theme would be that of systematic decision making – whether it be human or automated. There seemed like no place better than a trading firm where that happens a lot in actual day-to-day practice. Doing research at a trading firm, the feedback cycles also tend to be faster than in academia, so there’s never a dull moment and you can switch projects with a quick turnaround. I also regarded there to be better prospects for early-career progression and stability, working in industry generally. 

Tell us about your experience in the Graduate Quant Research Program.

I joined SIG during COVID lockdowns, so my onboarding consisted of 3 weeks of Zoom classes on options trading basics. After that, I went straight into doing research and learning on-the-job. When borders opened, I was able to travel to SIG’s US headquarters in Philadelphia. There, I spent roughly 2 months going through a dedicated Quant Researcher training program, where we were taught different datasets and tools used in research at SIG, as well as additional machine learning and options pricing theory.

Tell us about a typical day for you.

I can normally be found working on my current research projects. Projects typically involve putting data through back testing or analysis pipelines, then scrutinising the outputs for the purpose of evaluating a strategy or validating a hypothesis. In the early stages of a project, I may be thinking more about the project’s scope, methodology, and ways to innovate on our trading strategies. Throughout the project, I could also be documenting the results and sharing them with the team or chatting with developers and traders about strategy implementation and deployment. Occasionally, an ad-hoc idea or question might arise, which allows me to run a quick study on that. 

Are there any specific skills or qualities that are essential to succeed in Research at SIG?

We work with data on a daily basis, so overall savviness and intuition when reasoning about data is naturally needed. Projects may also require their own specific domain knowledge, from how particular financial instruments work, to how exchanges disseminate their high-frequency market data. It helps to have the resourcefulness to pick that up and apply any new assumptions to the analysis. The teams of trading, technology, research are all stakeholders of the trading system, yet each group differs in expertise. Collaborating effectively across these areas is essential, so it’s important to be able to communicate well between them.

How would you describe the growth you’ve seen in your time at SIG?

There’s certainly been growth in the impact of my work. The first few projects I worked on didn’t have much consequence to SIG’s trading, although I still learned a lot from doing them. My more recent projects, however, have gone on to affect SIG’s trading strategies in a very core way via a component of our option pricing model. The research I do now leverages earlier work, whether it be re-using some older code or an analysis technique. Over time, I’ve also gained familiarity with our quant tools and datasets. As a result, my efficiency in doing research has also grown.

What do you like best about working at SIG?

I’m enjoying the opportunity to tackle complex quantitative problems that aren’t always well-defined to begin with. For instance, we may be trying to determine whether some perceived effect in the markets is real. Given the noise inherent to financial markets, the approach is not always clear-cut, often requiring creative and critical thinking. It’s a blast working with terabyte-scale datasets and having the computing resources to process them effectively. The culture at SIG is also very collaborative. It feels like every team wants every other team to succeed, across different business units and even across offices.

What projects and experiences have been most rewarding so far?

A few projects have involved collaboration with the US team, where we’ve adapted some of their findings over to APAC markets. It’s then always an exciting yet nervous time watching a strategy that you’ve worked on enter production trading. The most rewarding feeling is monitoring those strategies and seeing them perform as expected from back tests and pilot tests.

What three pieces of advice would you give to a graduate interviewing at SIG?

1: Show your maths ability: Brush up on any maths skills which may have become rusty over time.

2: Think logically and strategically under uncertainty: Fun fact, SIG was founded by poker players who favoured thinking logically and strategically in the face of uncertainty. This is helpful information to guide your expectations of the interview process. 

3: Be bold in your questions and thoughtful in your answers: The way you ask and answer questions shows your thinking process, so consider what you are showing about yourself through the way you choose to tackle a question.

What’s your background? What did you study?

I did a pure mathematics PhD before joining SIG. My thesis was on applications of probability theory to chaotic dynamical systems. While the subject matter of my PhD is not something that I regularly use at work, the research and abstract problem-solving skills that I developed during my PhD are indispensable tools that I still use every single day.

What sparked your interest in working for a trading firm over Academia?

Trading firms have no shortage of hard research problems to solve, which is not unlike academia. However, doing research at a trading firm is much more collaborative than in academia. While you may be the expert on a particular topic in the office, you will still be in constant discussion with other researchers, traders, and technologists about your work. In contrast, I found doing a PhD to be quite isolating – mathematics is so diverse that most mathematicians only have surface level familiarity with each other’s work. Also, in an academic career one has plenty of non-research responsibilities (e.g., teaching, administrative responsibilities). Quantitative researchers at trading firms are able to spend most of their time focussing on research. Lastly, research at a trading firm has a fast and tangible impact on the business compared to the very long peer-review process in academia. 

Tell us about your experience in the Graduate Quant Research Program.

 I was well supported during the onboarding experience. At the very beginning, I spent a few weeks doing a course on options theory, all while participating in social events with grads and attending weekly poker lessons. Over time, I was given increasingly difficult projects, and later I was invited to visit the headquarters in Philadelphia to attend an intensive course for quantitative researchers. There I met with many senior quants from our US business, attended lectures on SIG’s options trading stack, and worked through several mock studies from different business areas. Attending that course was the highlight of my first few years at SIG, and the connections I made there have served me well since returning to Sydney.

Tell us about a typical day for you.

There is never a typical day! At times I can be solely focused on a single longer-term project, while on other days I will be jumping between meetings and answering ad hoc research questions from traders or investigating the performance of improvements to our strategies. Having said that, I generally start the day by trying to talk to people in the Philadelphia office while our office hours overlap. I will then dive into whatever project is my current focus - this could involve building datasets in preparation for doing a study or creating a model, interrogating data to build signals to improve our production trading strategies, or checking that a new model has been implemented correctly before it is released into production. Often, I will have to talk to traders before the markets open to discuss ongoing projects. Meetings with other quants and teams can be scattered throughout the day.

Are there any specific skills or qualities that are essential to succeed in Research at SIG?

Aside from statistics and programming skills, I think good quants are thrifty, open-minded, and very curious, with a bit of a competitive streak. Our goal is to get to the truth of problems as cheaply as possible, and then to convert that truth into something tradeable – all the mentioned skills help in the pursuit of these goals.

How would you describe SIG’s growth, since you joined?

The firm has big ambitions for APAC markets, and consequently the Sydney office has been growing at a rapid pace. The atmosphere in the office is one of excitement and anticipation – nobody expects the work to be easy, but everybody is raring to do their bit.

What do you like best about working at SIG?

I enjoy the intensely collaborative and cross-disciplinary environment in which we do research at SIG – to get to the bottom of a particular question may involve talking to traders, operations, quants, or a variety of technologists to understand how each detail impacts the strategies that we are running. The work is also very challenging, which makes success all the more rewarding. 

What projects and experiences have been most rewarding so far?

I’ve worked on a few projects that started as solo ventures building a model for a specific trading need that then evolved into collaborations with tech and trading in order to implement the model and incorporate it into our trading strategies. Seeing projects evolve from a simple concept to a fully-productionised component of a profitable strategy is incredibly rewarding, and it is a great feeling to have the support of your colleagues throughout the whole process.

What three pieces of advice would you give to a graduate interviewing at SIG?

1: Brush up on basic probability theory and statistics. 

2: Make sure you understand some basic financial concepts. For example: how does an order book work, what is a call, what is market making and why would anybody be a market maker.

3: If you have any questions for us, make sure you ask them. We want people to comfortably be making an informed decision when joining the firm.