The first time I heard about Positive Equity was from a friend who thought we would be a good match. I had just a vague idea about what the company was about (trading careers are not well known in Croatia yet), but after doing some research on trading and Positive Equity, I got more and more interested. They look for former athletes, gamers, people with a positive outlook on life and it really seemed like a good place to be.
The job itself can be very rewarding. So what’s not to like? After a few e-mails and two rounds of interviews, I was asked to come to the social gathering, to meet the rest of the office at bowling. A week later I got the call, offering me a trainee position.
After reading a few books on the subject I became aware that there is a line of people waiting on Wall Street, hoping to get a chance to work in a successful trading office, so I’m really happy and excited to be here.
I’ve been in the office just for a week now so I can’t offer much insight, just my first impressions. Which are very positive, just like I expected.
Everyone in the office showed interest in us, senior traders and IT support are always willing to help and answer any questions. We made a few Skype calls with colleagues in Dublin, guys there welcomed us with a bright smile also offering their help if we need anything.
Some of the answers we had to find ourselves by doing a one page summary about it. Jason always reminds others to teach us how to fish, not giving us the fish. Positive’s atmosphere is fostered in the office, not a cliché but at PE that’s considered to be one of the cornerstones of success. Our boss even asked us to be nice in traffic. I liked that one.
During the first few weeks we have to study a lot of theory, write book summaries, reports about economic institutions, indicators. This may not sound like fun as we already know some of the stuff, but it is necessary to covert it before we can move on to next stage. Next week we should start to get to know the software for charts and technical analysis.
Fun fact: In some countries when you say to somebody that you are a trader, the term is probably self-explanatory enough, while in Croatia we don’t even have a word for this job. In direct translation the word trader could be often confused with merchant or vendor, or a person employed in some kind of shop. We talked about that in the office and agreed it can be fun explaining to people what we do.
Trading may be a new game in Croatia, but everything can be learned. Traders at our desk are living proof. We all hope to become traders and get to their level one day. We are at the beginning of that process and it will take time, but step by step, we will get there.