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Hello guys! My name is Chidambaram N, and I was a summer intern at Axxela Advisory, a trading firm. It was an offline intern, with an easy 15-minute commute to the office; getting ready and experiencing the first day in a corporate setting, after never-ending pandemic delays and virtual college first days, was something to be savoured.
But going back to the unsavourable time that is selection season. To be very frank, I wasn’t too confident on my resume getting me through, so I started searching for companies that have tests. I had been working on my logical reasoning and Axxela was one such company whose tests were designed to test one’s mental ability.
I’ll share the rounds that I had went through to give an idea of what one can expect and get prepared accordingly.
The 1st round was a 5-minute test to check one’s mental maths. We were given around 80 questions to be solved in 5 minutes. Accuracy mattered a lot. These were questions involving simple operators, decimals, fractions. The sort of which could be found and practiced on websites like rankyourbrain.
The 2nd round was a 30-minute aptitude test which was quite straightforward. Time here was more than sufficient.
The 3rd round is an activity round for trading. Here, candidates are grouped together to take part in a simulated game to trade among the group. Always remember to buy low and sell high.
The final round is the interview. Overall, they wish to know how fast you react and are given some problems to solve, as one requires a fast set of hands for trading.
Deep knowledge in finance or prior experience in trading isn’t required at all. They judge how eager you are in addition to the tests.
Once I had gotten the internship, I spent my time going through various modules of Zerodha's Versity, as advised by a senior, and I felt it was really useful for my intern. This pretty much covers everything one needs to know in trading.
During the first week of the internship, interns were not inducted to trading itself, but rather, the assets we would be trading and the platform we would use. The internship consisted entirely of trading on their simulator. They wanted us to learn and experience the beauty of trading ourselves, as everyone has a different perspective and tend to have their own trading strategy, which wouldn't necessarily work for others. We would note down our trades, the reasoning behind them, and introspect if they went wrong.
Now, there are four major asset classes: equity, fixed income, forex, and commodities. Axxela doesn't trade in equity, and in our internship, we traded commodities. Interns were divided into groups and set to trade gas, oil, soyabean, copper, and wheat.
The office working hours are a bit unusual since trading is done on the US markets. The firm expects us to work at least 11 hours a day, 5 days a week. However, the activity in the market starts only from 7 PM. Until then, we would spend our time compiling reports of the contracts we traded in the previous years. I would analyse any pattern that could be generalized over the years - or the reason for its anomalous absence. In addition, we also made a handbook on the commodity we traded, including everything one might need to know while trading in it.
The average age of the company is very low, in the late 20s. Hence, we could effortlessly interact with seniors and get to know their experiences. Many were forthcoming and extroverted, hearing our views on the market and guiding us whenever we were wrong.
Now that I've completed this internship, I have got a newfound interest and respect for trading; the satisfaction of executing a positive trade hits absolutely different. You get to evaluate yourself daily, based on the money you make. When you make some loss, it provides you with a chance to contemplate what you have done wrong, and change till you get the desired result.