It's a crowded market, but not necessarily a lucrative one. I worked for a large investment bank, was paid well, but was also rather unhappy. I'm not a fan of

It's a crowded market, but not necessarily a lucrative one. I worked for a large investment bank, was paid well, but was also rather unhappy. I'm not a fan of office politics and also hated the fact that what we were doing was actually quite unsophisticated, yet we dressed it up like the most complicated thing ever to clients. We were using wavelets for analysing market micro-structure and using any generated signals to influence our trades. Wavelets were the topic of my thesis, so I was a good fit for the team. I know it sounds complicated, but if you looked at the signals we generated, they looked awfully similar to a rather basic trend-following style regression model. I believe we found a very complicated way to compute signals that a simple trend follower would compute in far fewer CPU cycles. Anyway, I got a fairly decent bonus one year (because markets were trending nicely), and decided I want to set up my own tech company. I was always a nerdy guy, and I thought I could contribute more in the tech space. With hindsight it was a good move, and financially I believe I am now better off than most of my trading colleagues. My advice to new guys joining our desk (maybe it helps you a bit): focus on your exit, more than your entry, and if you can help it, be really, really, really lucky :P