Advice Needed: Market Risk FT or FO trading internship for breaking into AM
Hi everyone,
I'd like to humbly ask for an opinion - I've been offered FT Market Risk at GS as well as a year-long trading internship at a MM for their FX trading desk. I personally am not looking to trading as a long term career, but was looking to move into Asset Management one day. I'm lateraling in from a technology job I've worked at another BB for close to a year, as these two opportunities came up.
I saw on another thread (thread title: is-it-crazy-to-take-a-bomo-position-over-a-fo-position) that the responses were quite hostile when it came to assessing the possibility of even taking a MO role over a FO role, but with my different circumstances, I was wondering if it even made sense to even consider the market risk role. (or I'm just plain foolish)
My train of thought is that in market risk, I may be able to learn a broader range of skills that may be applicable to portfolio management/asset management as compared to a trading assistant role/(possibly junior trader in a specific trading desk if I make the jump).
My original plan was to take a finance masters (or MBA) to break into asset management, until the two opportunities came around. I do feel that either of these will get me closer to AM than staying as a technologist in a BB, but feel free to let me me know if quitting so early is bad for my resume.
Please kindly let me know if you have thoughts on this :)
GS does have a pretty good risk management team with a decent amount of autonomy- it's not just a regulatory role from what I have heard 3rd hand. (Someone on WSO may be able to tell you more 1st or 2nd hand)
But in general, it's sometimes better to be FO at a MM firm than MO at a BB. With the state of trading today- and I worry that trading doesn't develop transferable skills- it's understandable how this would be a tough decision. I am also not sure if this "internship" will result in a permanent position.
The conservative risk-averse route here may be to accept at GS and try to lateral into GSAM-- this process may take a few years.
Let's try and figure out how the chessboard will look in two or three moves. What is your background? What did you study in undergrad? In three years you can lateral or go to grad school. You can almost certainly do an MBA at an M7 (maybe not Harvard or Stanford) out of GS Risk. If your undergrad is in STEM, that also opens up an MFE program-- and you could probably get accepted at a Columbia, Princeton, CMU, or NYU. An MFE at NYU would then qualify you to go work as a researcher at a hedge fund or certainly a BlackRock or AQR, for instance. And if you have a good track record in GS risk and work with folks in GSAM, there may be opportunities to lateral-- especially if you bring something to the table that they need.
Hi, thanks for the advice! It does follow through logically that the less riskier option would be to go to GS, as you mentioned. I hold a degree in Computer Science and worked as a software developer at another BB; - I have heard it is difficult to get into programs like Princeton without having front office experience of some kind - how true is this?
Also, when working in technology, I have heard from people around me that it is difficult to actually lateral internally - is it slightly easier from risk or should I expect the difficulty to be more or less the same? Your thoughts would be very much appreciated :)
I would take the revenue-generating position every time
Congrats on the offers
it really depends on what you want. Trading and risk management are not the same...because risk management only teaches you how to measure the risk to a portfolio under a wide set of circumstances...but doesn't teach you how to predict which set of circumstances (price action, macro forces, ect...) is most likely, and thus, how to initiate a position.
So, do you want to trade, or do you want to be a risk/portfolio analyst? If you are just interested in a secure job with decent $$ potential, then GS risk is a great job. There is always a long shot option down the road for an AM lateral.
MM trading is pretty high risk career wise...and something that you can do later down the road...but its hard to lateral from MM to BB. For that reason alone, i'd take GS risk (and i'm actually a prop trader). You will always be able to interview for the S&T super day in a couple years if you are already inside GS and get to know a few people inside HR or on a trading desk (risk has a chance to mingle with trading from time to time). But its tough to get that slot when you are coming from a MM FX desk (unless you are banking $$..in which case the MM will pay better).
This is a classic risk vs reward calculation...the higher probability move is to goto GS risk if you don't have a BB trading offer.
Thanks ironnchef for the input! I am not personally crazy about a career in trading. Either one would be closer to my goal compared to staying as a software developer at the BB I'm at, I think.
I do enjoy the process of carefully thinking out decisions that comes along with longer term investing, and I very much prefer taking my time to make decisions as compared to deciding a course of action fast. Therefore, I'm not sure if I should weight my career choice based on this personality factor.
Year-long internship sounds like a red flag to me, as it suggests the firm plans to hire cheap labor, rolled 1-yr at a time. Obviously it could be a good learning opportunity, but there are generally good reasons for not taking internships/contract positions once you've graduated. You should do the homework to figure out whether you'll really get something out of 1 yr internship.
I don't think the FT role in MRMA at GS will necessarily teach you the skills you need for AM/PM (keeping in mind AM/PM is pretty broad). You'll be far too removed from the trading desks (for good reason) to learn much about trading/PM. You can maybe learn the quantitative techniques reasonably well, as GS quants are generally pretty sharp and the basic modeling techniques will be the same regardless of division. There may be a few risk analysts who can teach you a thing or two about trading diff products, but better to just talk to the traders themselves. GS is a pretty big place, so it's not inconceivable that you can move from risk to GSAM, for example.
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