JPM securities does pretty well in the credit space, but Citi global markets is the gold standard without a doubt. Especially in the negotiated market, as they underwrite a lot of riskier deals (The syndicates are netting discounts of like $20-$40 a bond, which is awesome money in this day and age). JPM is pretty high up there too, but even Morgan Stanley wins more deals in the credit space.

 

I always follow Coalition's rankings which they do every quarter. Recommend you grab it directly from them by giving them your corporate email address or sometimes you will find it republished on businessinsider. I'm new to this forum so cannot post a link but you can do a google search for "wall street banks ranked by coalition 2016" and the results from businessinsider will be what you're looking for. Ranking is by revenue and is split by major business lines and region. HTH.

 
MeatHead:
Commodities, perhaps in this order: Goldman Morgan Stanley Citi Macquarie BAML Macquarie could even be one of the top tier now with the acquisition of Cargil and potentially Noble's oil books.

Macquarie is ahead of Citi, now. I think MS's position on power is pretty dominant, and J Aron for gas is too strong. but Macquarie is definitely in that 3rd/4th spot. That's one shop I'd like to get into, work with them a lot, but no reason to leave that shop if you work there. I hear too many great things.

 

It's just remarkable that there are kids who have never stepped foot on a floor, let alone traded a product, talking about desk rankings/exit opps when they are in college.

Get an offer in hand and then think about this. It's so incredibly difficult to even get a job at a BB S&T desk. When I was in the space my entire floor hired like 6 interns a year.

This is getting ludicrous.

 
Best Response

Despite their bad year, GS is still well regarded across asset classes. JPM strong too, particularly in London.

For G10 FX and Rates, Citi is in a very good position (a few years ago DB and Barclays were too).

MS notable for investor structuring and I recall hearing they were good for some private side commodities trades, BAML good in the credit space last I heard. Barclays strong at credit in London. In credit, the bank's position in primary issuance really matters. In general any bank with a very strong PWM/PB side will be well placed for mandates with an ECM origin, as well as with structured investment products.

French banks good at equity exotics. Citi particularly weak in the equities space.

Emerging markets show a lot of variance. I've heard UBS is really strong in Hong Kong. I know that Credit Suisse is exceptional amongst BBs in Brazil, BAML good too there.

Normally you live well if you are Top 3, you get by if you're top 5, and you struggle when you're outside of that. Commodities is just NOT a comfy space for banks, even if you're Top 3.

The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.
 

Banks are not as strong in commodities because physical trade shops tend to dominate the industry. They have all of the capital and resources of a bank but they actually move product around as well. This physical position allows them much more flexibility in how they trade. They have storage, pipeline space, ships, etc.

Also, trade shops don't have to worry about market making and can take on spec positions (due to regulation of the banks).

 

options/vol and structured products are always good places to learn.

More vanilla products go increasingly electronic and that means more stat/arb based...which is good if you are a quant programmer...but bad if you are an old school trader. FICC still has lots of opportunity, and is a great place to learn a variety of markets.

 

The most complicated product you are able to handle is a good place to start. I'm very quantitative but not a programmer, so I picked structured credit as an area to focus on (CDX, CDS, options on CDX, tranches) and decided to go for credit options ultimately. The idea behind something like that is this: If I can trade options on CDX, I can probably trade options on equities or FX, and I can definitely trade the more vanilla underlying (CDS). It gives you a lot of flexibility.

 
Beny23:

How about an options/futures/other derivatives desk?

Thanks. Do you particularly know of any options desks that use these techniques? I would imagine the rates desks are pretty quantitative but not a 100% sure. I was under the impression that any equity options desk (structuring and strategy) would be a lot of continuous time finance math, but could be wrong.

Would appreciate some guidance here.

 
Martinghoul:

It depends... Research/strategy would use a lot of the techniques you've listed and more. It's rare, however, for salespeople or flow desk mkt-makers to use these things, as they rarely need them.

That makes sense. So no sell side traders use such stuff in their analysis? Also, would you happen to know if there's any desk that engages in some kind of systematic trading (either short term or medium term)?

Thanks,

 

I think you are approaching this the wrong way. You should be separating by role, not by desk, and aiming towards quant/modeling roles, the asset class is less relevant. I'm a rates trader myself and, like you said, we use PCA all the time for example. However, using PCA means I have a tab in one of my excel spreadsheets where I change one or two parameters and press shift f9. That's the depth of my PCA analysis. The spreadsheet is programmed by our quants with some help from the IT guys. My point is S&T desks use information based on those things, and obviously some level of understanding is required, but if you want something that's "heavy" on the things you mentioned you should aim for a quant role in pretty much any asset class.

 
Maximus Decimus Meridius:

I think you are approaching this the wrong way. You should be separating by role, not by desk, and aiming towards quant/modeling roles, the asset class is less relevant.
I'm a rates trader myself and, like you said, we use PCA all the time for example. However, using PCA means I have a tab in one of my excel spreadsheets where I change one or two parameters and press shift f9. That's the depth of my PCA analysis. The spreadsheet is programmed by our quants with some help from the IT guys.
My point is S&T desks use information based on those things, and obviously some level of understanding is required, but if you want something that's "heavy" on the things you mentioned you should aim for a quant role in pretty much any asset class.

This is spot on.

As a sell side trader you dont sit there all day solving math equations. You will use these things when you work on side projects but day to day roles just require some sort of understanding to use the tools built by the quants.

Last time i did proper maths on the desk was when i was looking at a new trading strategy and had to do some PDE's to figure out how the risk behaved, but this was not required for the day to day role of a market maker.

 

To be honest, I find a trading seat leaves most things open. If you want to use time series modelling, optimization etc then as a trader no one is stopping you to do so. Good traders are the guys who are always looking for something that can make money, you sort of have this job description of "provide liquidity to clients and manage risk etc", but really a lot of the time is open to exploring creative new ways of making money.

 
derivstrading:

To be honest, I find a trading seat leaves most things open. If you want to use time series modelling, optimization etc then as a trader no one is stopping you to do so. Good traders are the guys who are always looking for something that can make money, you sort of have this job description of "provide liquidity to clients and manage risk etc", but really a lot of the time is open to exploring creative new ways of making money.

Thanks, that makes sense. Another general question I had, and for the benefit of the forumers I thought I'd ask here instead of a PM. How is an associate's role different than an analyst in S&T. I was not an analyst in trading and lateralled there after my 2nd year. I'm sure I won't be getting to trade anytime soon, but wondering what the expectations & responsibilities were for incoming associates.

 

Can confirm citi was aggressive in credit in 2017 and probably still is.

This is for CDS/CDX space.

Edit: also CDO https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-26/as-synthetic-cdos-ro…

Bbrg articles are free for 1Y so you may need to print to save.

longshortmycock:
Make sure to go to a place that is growing and not shrinking - that is key.

So who is shrinking? Think a DB, Barclays

Who is growing quickly? BAML, Wells Fargo, Citi

And of course you got the stalwarts of JPM and GS (but be weary, they are losing ground right now)

 

UBS - no questions. I really don't know what the last two posters were smoking, but I'll take $100 of it.

UBS are global number 1 in equities and have been for 9 years running. 1 in every 7 shares worldwide goes through them.

BAML - doesn't even need an explanation - just no.

Citi and CS - yeah great banks for other things, but S&T is what UBS does best.

 
anonymousman:
UBS - no questions. I really don't know what the last two posters were smoking, but I'll take $100 of it.

UBS are global number 1 in equities and have been for 9 years running. 1 in every 7 shares worldwide goes through them.

BAML - doesn't even need an explanation - just no.

Citi and CS - yeah great banks for other things, but S&T is what UBS does best.

Just quoting this so the evidence of your idiocy is there for the world to see.
 

No offence to the above posters, but everything I've heard over the last year seems to agree with AfricanPropTrader's comments. In FICC, Citi dicks on those banks above so hard, it ain't even close, and in Equities, there's been little to choose between them recently. Also, when you compare Equities and FICC earnings in Q1 2010 for the above banks, it isn't even close. Apart from the surprise BAML FICC performance, that's how it's been for a while. http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7730/q1x.jpg

 

Also, you might find this thread helpful http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?p=24255185

I used it when comparing the banks as I had to make a choice on multiple offers as well. Some noteable numbers for 2009

Bank - Equities (#rank) - FICC (#rank) BAML - 4.9bn (5) - 17.3bn (4) CS - 6.9bn (2) - 9.8bn (7) UBS - 4.5bn (8) - (-0.5bn) (14) Citi - 5.1bn (3) - 21bn (2)

Whoever mentioned above that Citi was only strong in corp fin. clearly has no idea what he was talking about. To put Citi's 21bn FICC revenue in 2009 into comparison, GS had FICC revenue of 24bn in the same year and Citi was the only bank who came near it.

For Equities, I would say CS, but I've heard the gap in Equities is closing between all the banks now (bar GS), but FICC is still dominated by GS, JPM, Citi, DB, and if Q1 is anything to go by, BAML as well.

Hope that helps :)

 

The banks are comparable enough that you should go where you like the people and think they'll take time to train you.

If you're going to go solely based on pay or intangibles, i'd say cs>baml>citi/ubs. CS doesnt have tarp, and has on average the best ppl, I think. And stamford is a dealbreaker for me.

your mileage may vary.

 

I agree with anonymous man. I would take the opportunity to work on the biggest trading floor in the world any day. Not to mention UBS does have a very strong S&T. They are allegedly reworking their FICC group and equities has always been strong there.

 

" I would take the opportunity to work on the biggest trading floor in the world any day."

what difference does this make? I can probably get to other floors in my building faster than they can get to the other end of theirs. it's a cool pr thing I guess to have the biggest floor, but it's not a competitive advantage.

 
Jimbo:
" I would take the opportunity to work on the biggest trading floor in the world any day."

what difference does this make? I can probably get to other floors in my building faster than they can get to the other end of theirs. it's a cool pr thing I guess to have the biggest floor, but it's not a competitive advantage.

And once again it is in STAMFORD

Jack: They’re all former investment bankers who were laid off from that economic crisis that Nancy Pelosi caused. They have zero real world skills, but God they work hard. -30 Rock
 

I'm not sure how many times we're going to have to rehash this nonsense... S&T is not uniform, even within each division (FI and EQ).

  1. For example, working on UBS Foreign Exchange desk is a remarkable opportunity. The size of that business gives you so much opportunity to do creative things. But I would not give up a Citigroup Interest Rate Derivatives offer to work on UBS IR (note: these are both in Fixed Income...) Please refrain from comparing apples to oranges.

The point here is do not say "Fixed Income at XYZ bank is awesome and outshines everyone else", when the reality is there are certain business within FI that are making up the difference for deficiencies elsewhere.

  1. All of you who are not currently in the business need to understand something. "Past performance is not indicative of future results" I say this for the following reasons:

1) justify UBS' performance recently. They are a strong business but that #14 ranking posted above is not a good indication of the profit potential for you as an employee working with a large book of business (again for example: on the FX desk)

2) Highlight the reality that some of these already profitable banks (like CS) have substantially more upside than banks such as Citi, and BAML. In all honesty, over the short-medium term, banks like Citi, BAML run the risk of losing business to banks like DB, CS, BCS. So please factor this into your decision.

In general what i want you to take away from this, is any one who posts a ranking in response to your question without qualifying their answer is either in the same position as you (looking for a job), or in the business but not in a place where they fully understand what makes a business profitable.

 

CreditDerivatives is making excellent points:

Regardless of how you want to subjectively rank these BB firms, it makes no real difference to your potential within the firm.

Most rookies love to talk about which banks are the kings of Fixed Income, but I have one name for you:

"Greg Lippmann"

(i'll wait while those of you who aren't familiar with the business go ahead and google him)

Another point i want to make:

http://optionsgroup.com/indexfiles/pdfs/OGWebsiteSnapshot_09.pdf

go to that link and check page 7.

People move around on the street all the time, I really hope that those of you who do have fulltime offers or are currently analysts, do not believe that the firm at which you start really means anything. These guys swap employees as fast as they swap interest rates.

 

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