In algo trading,

sweeping generally means sending market orders to “sweep up” opposing limiting orders;

posting generally means sending limit orders…

Hi XR,

I have heard from 2 relatively old finance IT guys (one with experience in GS, Barcap, baml…, another in Barcap, Nomura….) that risk system is a good field for IT guys.

In good times, business invests in risk systems; In bad times, business still needs risk systems.

Each IT system is sponsored by some big-shot business users. The more power your sponsor is, the more secure your job is. Sometimes risk managers have real power — they can sometimes stop “risky” trades.

Another field is e-trading. By “e-trading”, they mean mostly automated ECN-trading. I think exchange-trading too.

According to a 3-year veteran, CPF system is mostly mainframe based. Business logic is in COBOL, plus java for public-facing systems. Probably no c++.

Friends told me identical source code usually can compile in different compilers, but I feel there are subtle difference among compilers. It’s good to know which compilers are worth learning

msvc
gcc
sun compiler — citi