Do people in S&T actually manage personal/company accounts?
After skimming through the vault guide on Sales & Trading, it seems like all traders do is execute trades for people in sales. Is there any decision-making involved? I thought S&T was about picking investments and managing a portfolio (like what people do at hedge funds) rather than being a broker...
I thought I wanted to do S&T but this was not what I had in mind
Can somebody clarify? Thanks
you're thinking of investment management. people in investment management make investment ideas for funds from institutions (asset management) and wealthy individuals (private wealth management). it is much less fast/exciting/risky than many hedge funds though. more like wealth preservation/small alpha (there are exceptions of course).
people in S&T are broker/dealers- making markets in a given security on behalf of hedge funds/institutional investors. as well as creating/marketing new investment products to hfs/iis (e.g. structured credit securities for hfs to invest in or structred fx to deal with a global company's currency risks). sure there is decision-making but its not the holistic view of AM and HF. e.g. salespeople often need to give market advice to HFs, people in research often need to make insightful reports to send their market advice to HFs, and traders need to anticapte bid/ask flows in their specific security market.
basically HF and AM is where the direct investment decisions are made and in a way, S&T have the HFs/iis as their client and help them execute trades and make investment decisions. traders in S&T have the first responsibility of making markets for their clients, but they sometimes also make directional bets with the banks money too (but this is a secondary objective and since 2008 it is being decreased everywhere but goldman).
On an interest rates desk, where directional bets are still relatively common, and clients' orders more supplement the directional bets, the salespeople ask traders if they want a certain client's trade, the trader then decides if they want it (if it's worthwhile to the trader).
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