11 Comments
 

Based on the most helpful WSO content, here's what you need to know about flow trader pay:

  • Highly Variable Pay: Pay in Sales & Trading (S&T) is highly variable and not normally distributed. The base salary floors you, but the upside can be significant.
  • VP Level Compensation: VPs can earn anywhere from $250k to $2 million. If you don't make money, you'll just get your base and a small token bonus. If you make a lot of money, you'll get paid accordingly.
  • Experienced Traders: For experienced traders, especially those at non-BB (bulge bracket) shops, compensation can range from $600k to $800k all-cash, even if they don't take much risk.
  • Top Performers: High performers can still earn over $1 million at a bank, with no limit to what could be earned at a fund. However, only a small percentage of traders achieve this level of compensation.
  • Diminishing Returns: There are diminishing returns to compensation. For example, you can't expect to be paid 3x in your $60 million PNL year compared to your $20 million PNL year.

In summary, while some posts suggest that pay in trading is below average, the reality is that it is highly variable and can be very lucrative for top performers.

Sources: Q&A: VP Trader at BB, https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/trading/qa-vp-trader-at-bb?customgpt=1, Junior PM at a platform - How to negociate salary, Q&A: I'm an Agricultural Commodities Trader, https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/trading/qa-pm-at-hf-former-sellside-macro-trader?customgpt=1

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

They publish annual reports and also an annual renumeration report which can be found here https://www.flowtraders.com/investors/reports-documents. Other than 2020 it's pretty bad for the past 5 years. In 2021-2022 16-18 employees got total compensation > 1 million EUR (I believe including deferred stock based compensation) and the CEO was around 1.5-1.8 million EUR. Another board member seems to get similar comp to the CEO but those may be the highest paid. In 2023 the CEO got 656k EUR total compensation.

From what I understand pay there is heavily linked to firm performance so unless firm performance improves to something closer to 2020 levels I wouldn't expect much. Senior employees may make low 7 figures in good years but not consistently. Over time it seems Flow Traders has also reduced the fraction of operating profit paid as bonuses which is not helping either.

 

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