Hi all. I am starting soon as a graduate quant trader at one of SIG, IMC, Optiver, or Akuna, and I will be trading equity options, that's all I know. My background is just math, so I am comfortable with probability and stats, but I have little knowledge on finance and programming.
Questions:
A. what do option traders at these quant firm do? I have no clue how they make money.
B. I have a list of ideas for how to prepare. What I do not have is a sense of which ones are worth the time:
1. Reading Books. I don't know which books help
2. Playing interview style trading games to build more trading intuition
3. Trading options in my own account. The size would be tiny, and I have no good data and no infra. So I am not sure whether I would learn anything real
4. Doing a few trading competitions.
5. Trading on Kalshi or Polymarket.
I have almost no context about the industry. I do not know what the first six months look like. And my goal is to do well.
What do you wish you had done before your first day as a full time option traders?
Any advice appreciated. I am fine with hearing that most of this list is useless if that is the case.