Wondering if any current or ex-MBB consultants could shed light on what personal account trading restrictions are like at MBB (in the US). Am particularly curious as to how personal account trading policies at MBB differ from that at BB IBDs
I was wondering about the following:
1.) Pre-clearance - Do all trades need to get pre-cleared with compliance? Are indices / ETFs non-restricted or do these need to get pre-cleared as well? Are you allowed to use any brokerage or is there a specific list of brokerages you need to use in order to trade?
2.) Ease of Pre-Clearance- Generally how stringent is the pre-clearance process? Does it need to get signed off by a Partner / Senior Manager in your team or just via compliance?
3.) Types of trades - are you allowed to short stock or trade options? Or are you only allowed to go long only / no options trades permitted? Is there a minimum hold period for each trade?
4.) Blacklist - I'm guessing there compliance will have an internal list of clients that employees are prohibited from trading in (due ongoing mandates for example) - how extensive is this blacklist of securities? Would MBB pretty much have every blue chip on the blacklist (and hence employees prohibited from trading)? Like at a high level, how easily can employees trade popular blue chips such as MSFT, AAPL, AMZN etc?
5.) Firm Sentiment on personal trading - generally in your experience did your colleagues actively trade stock / options or was this viewed as taboo? Do most of your colleagues / senior level people actively manage their money, or just keep it in a diversified ETF and forget about them (like most do in IBD)?
Thanks in advance
