Great traders come from all sorts of backgrounds. In fact there is no "type". Which is why it is funny that people try to group quant traders into a group that is supposed to be the right "type". If you take 1,000 quant guys and put them in a room to trade you will get the same normal distribution of success and failure as if you took 1000 high school drops outs in a room and let them trade. In other words, out of 1,000, maybe 10 from each group will find a way to make money consistently. You could do the same with doctors, lawyers, teachers, garbage men. What separates the boys from the men is discipline. And the reason why 95% of the active trading population fails is because they have no discipline. In most lines of work, lack of discipline will not get you fired, in fact, in many cases it’s a plus. That is what makes trading so hard. Your income is completely derived from a trait that most people are programmed not to have. It's the same reason why 60% of the people are overweight, why people can't quit smoking, or why married men cheat on their wives. A quant trader with no discipline is as bad a trader as anybody else with no discipline. It's not the quant part that makes them successful. The overwhelming problem that quants do have however is that they tend to ignore discipline and common sense for the sake of their mathematical models. After all, if you are going to trade off a model, you have to be faithful to it or what good does it do to have a model. Ignoring discipline for the sake of a model is a very dangerous activity that will eventually lead to a blowup of some sort. However having said that, their success rate in trading will be the same as those in the field of dentistry who try to trade. A disciplined dentist will make a great trader!