Trading Engineers make the best Share Traders?

Anyone heard this before? I have many times, apparently something to do with their mathematics background?? ... true or false.

I only have 2 examples of this, good and bad.

My g/friend's husband is a full time share trader and ex Engineer in his past life, he has been highly successful, they pretty much travel the world while trading.
He also uses sophisticated packages to monitor trades, trends etc. l

My brother an electronics engineer, no success when he got into share trading, lost money and gave it away.... perhaps its a load of BS.... I don't know??


MTR

 

50% success rate is higher than general population of traders. Not sure if your sample size is classed statistically significant.

 

Hahaha sounds anecdotal?

My only thoughts about engineer makes better trader is that they are usually very process oriented, logical people with affinity towards risk management.

 

If this were true, wouldn't there be no engineers left? I hear successful trading pays better.

 

There have been studies that people with higher testosterone levels get better trading returns. Greater risk taking, decisiveness etc.

Drinking increases testosterone and most engineers I know enjoy a drink or ten, coincidence?

 

People can become good at share trading with persistance. The best ones I know are the ones that have developed their own unique strategies along the way.

@barnes is a futures trader, maybe he can offer some insight on personality types that work.
Barnes is generally a contrarian and very lateral in his thinking. - From what I can tell

 

I'm a spot forex trader with a builders background (not engineers). I don't think that engineers are better. I know a lot of successful traders, none of them have an engineer background, but about 50% are good poker players.
Even though I'm a contrarian, I found that the best money is made using trend following strategies shorting.

 

I think engineers are too conservative to leave, don't take risks....most would never their day job...lol

 

I've only ever invested $13k in shares, finally cashed it all out for $5k. So no, not all engineers make good share traders!

 

any successful share traders on PC?

 

I am an engineer, and I will declare that I definitely do not agree with this statement!

 

It fundamentally makes sense...

1. Engineers make great coin, the first step to successful share trading is having the capital to generate returns to make the entire venture worthwhile. People with Arts degrees may very well be better as a whole but when you don't have two coins to rub together you can't actually do it so we'll never know!

2. To become an engineer you have to understand the mathematics on which any technical analysis is based, you understand reading and producing graphs and the fundamental idea of risk minimisation, it's basically the job. This maths grounding also makes them very formulaic in their processes.

3. Engineers are inherently smart people. This helps, it's not an easy degree and will weed out most of the "trying really hard but not very smart types" pretty damn quickly.

4. Most engineers have a solid commerce foundation as well, iirc Engineers at UWA were required to do 4 commerce units as part of the degree and I imagine it's similar around the world, this fundamental understanding gives them the added bonus of having a basic understanding of fundamental analysis to back up the technical analysis side of the equation.

Combine all of those and I'm sure a few other factors and it makes sense. I dare say they're in a better position to go into it than those with genuine commerce backgrounds (who are more likely to go in thinking they know everything already and no put in the requisite learning compared to an engineer who knows enough to know what to learn but not enough to not have to learn it). I dare say that maths and IT graduates would also be near the top. Most other degrees are going to be coming from a lot further back and thus unlikely to make it to the table in the first place, lot easier to learn trading if you don't have to learn the math and language behind it first.

 

Actually everything I've read suggests that the gender with more oestrogen excels at trading. So female engineers are laughing.

 

Testosterone levels predict City traders’ profitability

 

I'm on my phone and away from home so find it hard to link alternatives , however I've never heard it contended that the will to take risk enhances results; usually it's the opposite. I cant search and link any double blinded randomised controlled trials to support or reject your link on my phone however would expect a paucity of evidence. As a bloke I reckon my wife and my 15 year old daughter would be far more clinical than me in executing buying and selling according to a trading plan and quantitative analysis

 

but do engineers make the best traders ?

 

I think we need Maths/Statistics skills, Strategy skills and Self-control.
So given everything else is same, Engineers (or similar) might be better than others.

 

Hmm, mathematics.
Maybe they meant software engineers.

 

Don't know? seems like its BS anyway, no truth behind this whatsoever, why am I surprised