It was a final test, and Fargis was relieved. The 30-year-old never went to business school or even took a finance class. But he knew poker. He had made a living playing the game online for six years from his Manhattan apartment, betting on up to eight hands at a time. Within a few days, Fargis — with no Wall Street experience — was offered a position trading stock options, a job that entails making multimillion-dollar gambles. His poker skills sealed the deal. "If someone's been successful at poker then there's a good chance they could be successful in this business," said Toro partner Danon Robinson. "If you have no interest, that's almost a red flag.... It's almost the equivalent of not reading the Wall Street Journal." There's a part of Wall Street — investment banking in particular — that looks for recruits with sterling family connections and impeccable educations, and that favors sturdy young men and women who played college team sports such as lacrosse and rugby. Toro Trading is not that Wall Street. Instead, it's one of the new breed of high-speed trading desks that are revolutionizing the financial markets, and making their money on the fractional gains from buying or selling a split-second ahead of their rivals. They look for job candidates who are quick-thinking, have nerves of steel and a head for numbers — the very skills that lead to success in online poker. "There's a certain maturity and ability to deal with risk that is hard to get any other way — unless you put the money on the table at some point in your life," said Aaron Brown, a hedge fund executive and author of the 2006 book "The Poker Face of Wall Street." Susquehanna International Group, a 1,500-employee trading firm based in a Philadelphia suburb, has made the card game a central part of its training program. New hires are given copies of "The Theory of Poker" and "Hold 'Em Poker" and spend one full day a week studying the game by playing it. "We are trying to teach people how to be good decision-makers under uncertainty," said Pat McCauley, who runs the training program. "It's not the stereotypical stuff with bluffing — it's real science." ..... Chris Fargis thought his big job interview was over. But when the partners at Wall Street upstart Toro Trading finished with their questions, they broke out a deck of cards and a green-felt card table. Mind playing a few hands of poker?
More of those HFT rascals....Germany just banned Euro shorting——>>>
Market chaos warning after German ban on shorting
Traders are predicting chaos on the world’s second-largest government bond market after the German authorities on Tuesday announced a ban on all naked short-selling in European public debt, as well as shares in the country’s 10 largest financial institutions.
Almost all the successful WWII American, and quite a few Japanese commanders, played poker.