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Commodities sales is a split between corporates and instititutions (hedge funds, govts and central banks on the precious metals side). With corporates there's a lot more explaining the markets to clients and pitching (including LOTS of power point). However corporates also do really interesting derivatives for hedging so you'll learn a lot about options and will probably have to do a bit of structuring. The main corporate clients in commodities are airlines, shipping companies, miners, utilities, oil and gas companies.

Can't speak on the other areas but I'm sure others can chip in.

 
fp175Commodities sales is a split between corporates and instititutions (hedge funds, govts and central banks on the precious metals side). With corporates there's a lot more explaining the markets to clients and pitching (including LOTS of power point). However corporates also do really interesting derivatives for hedging so you'll learn a lot about options and will probably have to do a bit of structuring. The main corporate clients in commodities are airlines, shipping companies, miners, utilities, oil and gas companies.

Can't speak on the other areas but I'm sure others can chip in.

Thanks alot for your answer

Anyone else, maybe on other areas in FICC? :)

 

Almost every FICC sales desk is split between real money, corporations & hedge funds.

Some desks also have sales-people that are more focused on structured strategies, often a sales-structuring hybrid role.

Jack: They’re all former investment bankers who were laid off from that economic crisis that Nancy Pelosi caused. They have zero real world skills, but God they work hard. -30 Rock
 

how good do your public speaking skills have to be for sales? I can pitch an idea to a group of 3-4 people but if you ask me to do it in front of 20 people I get extremely nervous. Will this be a problem?

 

The more complex the product the more face to face pitching you will do. Sales people do not need to pitch a vanilla swap or fx option to a client. The more vanilla sales people relay the trader's prices to the client all day long and maintain the client relationship after market hours via dinners etc.

 

It could also be split by regions.

The point is it's not always split up very distinctively and there could be overlaps..

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