A Typical Trader Day

Most traders start the day relatively early and get to their desks around 6:30—7 a.m. because they need to prepare for the trading day. Note that the exception to this timeframe is in San Francisco and Chicago. Trading floors in those locations generally operate on New York time, which means that their day starts one to three hours earlier in their time zone.

The preparation for the day consists of:

Review the trading book positions and P&L from the day before. P&L stands for profit and loss in the trading book from the change in market price between end of day (EOD) the day before yesterday and the end of day yesterday. What happens every day is that all the new trades that the trader executed that day are entered into ...

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