How To Become A Proprietary Trader: What It Is and Career Path

What is a proprietary trader and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

2 min read

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a proprietary trader. For example, did you know that they make an average of $48.09 an hour? That's $100,019 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 10% and produce 47,700 job opportunities across the U.S.

ScoreProprietary TraderUS Average

Salary

7.6

Avg. Salary $100,019

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 12.45%

Black or African American 5.54%

Hispanic or Latino 11.55%

Unknown 4.13%

White 66.12%

Gender

female 4.28%

male 95.72%

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 a proprietary trader

Explore proprietary trader education requirements

Most common proprietary trader degrees

Bachelor's

80.9 %

Master's

14.5 %

Associate

1.4 %

Start to develop specific proprietary trader skills

Skills	Percentages
Technical Analysis	11.96%
Equity Markets	10.48%
Equities	9.20%
Financial Markets	7.90%
Portfolio	7.53%

Research proprietary trader duties and responsibilities

Manage business, sales, marketing, international negotiation and communication for a commodities business.
Perform qualitative research on potential risk arbitrage positions and subjectively choose equities for inclusion in a risk arbitrage portfolio.
Research market strategies and trends using Bloomberg.
Develop quantitative driven proprietary models by Bloomberg BLP / API and VBA programming.

Prepare your proprietary trader resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your proprietary 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 a proprietary trader resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Proprietary Trader Resume templates

Build a professional Proprietary Trader resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Proprietary Trader resume.

Apply for proprietary trader jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a proprietary trader job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do proprietary traders rate their job?

-/5

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Proprietary Trader reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Jul 2023

Pros

Flexible job to do other things during the day

Cons

You have to be careful or you could lose money