Meet a Trading Intern

How would you describe your role?

For most people, the trading industry is pretty hard to understand at first glance. My friends and family would always ask me what a trading internship entails, and I’d always respond with an embarrassing “I don’t really know.” But over the course of the last ten weeks, I really got to understand what the role of a trader really is, and I had a great internship experience along with it.

To give some context, a trading role mostly involves making markets (posting buy prices and sell prices) for customers (such as those of you on Robinhood!) on different securities (options, stocks, ETFs, etc.). Basically, a trader provides liquidity to the market exchanges.

Tell us about your Susquehanna internship experience.

For the first five weeks of the internship, I was placed on the index vol desk during the morning, and we rotated to afternoon desk in the second half of the internship. Since everything was new at the time, I had a lot of questions to ask the traders around me, and they were all super willing to help out. It gave me a hands-on perspective on what the life of a trader would be like. We talked about everything from trading strategies to pick-up basketball games before work; from market effects and decision making to poker hand analysis. It gave me a good idea about life both inside and outside the office as a SIG trader.

During lunch, all the interns have a chance to eat together, talk about their day or plans for the night, and play a variety of games with each other to pass the time and relax. A ton of interns go to the big poker table to play poker games, but some others choose to play chess or SET.

Afterwards, we had an education session (afternoon for the first five weeks, morning for the second five weeks). The first half of education was dedicated to options theory. Though I’d taken options classes before, the way SIG taught everything so in-depth made me understand the important concepts in a much more confident manner than before. The second half was dedicated to mock trading, which gives us a chance to take on the role of a trader and buy or sell different options in a real-time market. The instructors are always friendly and happy to answer questions, which made the experience that much more enjoyable. Some of the instructors would even join us at the poker table after work, which was really nice as well.

After work, a lot of the interns would get dinner with each other and go to different activities (gaming café, arcade, museum, or bar). We have a big GroupMe group chat where a lot of interns coordinate get-togethers and activities, so there’s never really a time where you don’t have a chance to do something fun. SIG also sets up intern-wide events in Philadelphia that brings everyone together every few weeks or so.