Best macro desks
Which banks have the best macro desks (like rates / FX)? How would you rank them? Posting from London but would love to also hear about NYC!
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JPM and Citi for NYC. Maybe GS as well. Formerly DB as well, but no longer
Would def second Citi and JPM for NYC, especially in FX. For rates Citi and probably a bit more even between JPM and GS.
To be fair DB feels like it's trying to build out it rates business again, they've poached some good people from other shops in last couple of years. We'll have to see how that works out for them in the end.
Barclays is pretty decent too I think but would fall behind Citi/JPM/GS for me.
MS is bad.
OP here. Thanks for commenting I read a lot of your comments on here and they’ve been super helpful to me. I’m surprised - I thought GS rates was the best place to be for macro S&T especially in London. Also didn’t think Citi was as strong as JPM / GS given its restructuring and lots of senior people leaving since Fraser. Any thoughts? - thank you!
Also how would you rank the mid tier against each other for macro (especially in London) - so DB vs Barclays vs MS / BNP / XYZ? Thank you
And a follow up question; what’s the value of working at a non-major firm? Call it a Santander, BNP, HSBC, CS, BNY Mellon, etc. What are the pivots out of there?
Hi
The Citi restructuring has primarily impacted more credit type products, although FX also took some losses. Rates has been a lot less impacted and there remains very significant franchise value there. I'd also note that while Citi is probably top of the line for macro trading, it's a barbell - the other trading franchises are much weaker post-restructuring, whereas a lot of other banks have more balanced strength across products.
Regarding London, I unfortunately don't know very much, as my place only trades USD and entirely covered out of NYC
The smaller shops have significantly less flow than the larger shops of course, but the upside is a lot of them are exempt from Volcker rule I believe (because they don't take retail deposits and thus arent FDIC-insured) and you can take much more directional risk (prop trade). This only applies to dealers affiliated with foreign bank branches (which is tricky to figure out at times.. TD for example is Canadian but operates in the US with a domestic banking license) and with non-bank dealers (such as Cantor Fitzgerald). Since you take on directional risk you can often move from these smaller shops to macro hedge funds, although without flow its a lot harder to make money no matter what.
How would you rate MS in terms of rates trading compared to other banks? Thank you
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