How To Become An Equity Trader: What It Is and Career Path

What is an equity trader and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

If you love making money and doing research, an Equity Trader could be a great job for you. Equity traders do research and analysis to determine when to buy or sell shares of a company on the equities market. Duties as an equity trader also may include trading options, futures, and exchanging debt funds and other derivatives. You will need to show a high level of analytical skills, math skills, and detail-oriented skills.

To become an equity trader, you will need a bachelor's degree in business, finance, economics, or another related subject. You may need to earn a graduate degree to have more job opportunities and make more trades and money. Often employers prefer higher degrees. You will also need at least five years of experience in the financial market to be successful.

An equity trader can make an average base salary of $205,000. Also, you can add commissions to your base salary and your pay per year goes higher.

ScoreEquity TraderUS Average

Salary

7.6

Avg. Salary $101,759

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

9.5

Growth Rate 10%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.21%

Asian 12.20%

Black or African American 5.44%

Hispanic or Latino 11.27%

Unknown 4.12%

White 66.76%

Gender

female 9.74%

male 90.26%

Age - 43

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 43

Stress Level

9.5

Stress level is very high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

10.0

Complexity Level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

3.5

Work Life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become an equity trader

Explore equity trader education requirements

Most common equity trader degrees

Bachelor's

84.3 %

Master's

11.0 %

Associate

2.8 %

Start to develop specific equity trader skills

Skills	Percentages
Equities	11.85%
Technical Analysis	8.51%
Portfolio	8.04%
Financial Markets	7.85%
Risk Management	6.50%

Research equity trader duties and responsibilities

Design end-to-end index carve-out process to enable desk to risk manage and track PnL for global index trades.
Manage stock execution via NYSE automate system, NASDAQ automate system (INSTINET), and live NASDAQ market makers.
Manage business, sales, marketing, international negotiation and communication for a commodities business.
Trade NYSE equities utilizing in-house trading strategies and proprietary order placement utility software.

Prepare your equity trader resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your equity trader resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on an equity trader resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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