Sales and trading exit opportunities/pay/etc. (please help!)

Question

Hey guys,

Just received offers from several BB's for their summer S&T positions and summer IBD positions.

I'm currently in 3rd year university and worked in IBD at a BB last summer as well... Having been in IBD, I've definitely loved and hated some parts of it.

Namely, the hours are awful. Even so, the type of work bankers do is boring and not intellectually stimulating... at ALL. Therefore, I applied to a whole bunch of S&T places hoping for a change.

However, now that I have offers from both sides, I'm extremely nervous about jumping into S&T.

QWEigniteR · Accepted Answer

I hate when people who don't work in trading talk about 'exit opps'. Software developers in google don't have exit opps. Neither do lawyers. The only career that cares about 'exit opps' is banking and consulting.

yesman · Answer

there are a lot of good exit ops for traders, but:

Jim Cramer's record wasn't (and isn't) stellar; he's a personality
Michael Lewis was in sales
Taleb has a PhD in Financial Math - this had more to do with him going into academia than his trading background
Bob Rubin had a background in law and did m&a arb at Goldman.  he was also very involved with the dems, along with corzine

....I wouldn't say these guys are the best examples of exit ops

and why are there so many people who think that you can go from P/E to trading, vice-versa?

fafa · Answer

If u think banking is boring, why would u want to do it FT?  If you thought ur gf was boring, you wouldnt ask her to marry you.  If I were in ur position (and i was in a variation of it), I'd give the S+T a shot.  Typically its banking --> PE and Trading --> HF... altho you will see some bankers go to HFs, they tend to be confined in their selection of HFs to certain strategies.  You shouldnt be worried about pay - once u pass a certain threshold in salary, you have more money than you know what to do with anyway.

skins1 · Answer

McMo--I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying that it is not common. I know of salespeople who switched to trading, traders who switched to sales, and structurers who have gone on to both. 
   But this idea that traders can "easily" switch into sales is simply not correct. In the old days on cash flow desks that may be the case, but not these days and certainly not on desks that deal primarily with structured products and derivatives.
   And again, regardless of your job, if you suck, no other function is going to want you.

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Sales and trading exit opportunities/pay/etc. (please help!)

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Sales and trading exit opportunities/pay/etc. (please help!)

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