BRM at Morgan Stanley: Is it really trading?

BRM sounds like the bank's treasury desk. In that case, you're essentially a prop trader managing the firm's liquidity pool. Honestly, you probably have more discretion than you would as a market-maker since treasury trading is essentially the buy side.

I used to be a treasury trader at MS, so I sat next to all these guys. BRM used to have a decent risk mandate, but it really has been taken away these days. It is about funding the bank, and facilitating some low margin business to keep the clients happy. You can learn a lot there, but it isn't a red blooded high risk trading role, and the switch to equities or FX is going to be a LOT harder than the obvious route to a bond trading desk. Arguably being a trader in a treasury function is better than BRM, IF and ONLY IF your treasury department is a profit centre. Which in some places (like MS)...it is not.

So yeah, BRM is good, but market making is probably ahead. BRM won't give you a particularly large risk mandate, it is mostly just doing day to day stuff, in a smart, efficient and safe manner. There is plenty to learn and for smart people to get their teeth into.

BRM is not the actual Treasury (govie) desk.

The treasury desk at MS has had lots of ups and downs. Some years the desk makes 100mm...other years the desk loses money. Trading Treasuries can be a risky business, and MS has had some wild swings (usually accompanied with changes in desk management). While MS sees a decent amount of flow...flow doesn't really make much money anymore...desk P&L is all prop trading (in disguise of course)...so when you change traders (and MS changes treasury traders pretty frequently) you completely change the P&L profile of a desk.