How Do I Break In / Land A Trading Seat?
I've been working as a structurer/banker in a structured finance group in NYC for the past year and a half and absolutely hate it. The work is mind numbingly boring and generally anal about things that really don't matter. I'm also averaging 80 - 90 hours per week. I've been trying to find a way onto a trading desk for about 8 months now with no luck. There was an internal opening for a junior agency MBS trader, until it went to an external candidate w prior mbs trading experience.
There are almost zero trading seats open (I don't think I've seen a sell side ABS seat open below the vp level in probably a year and lateraling externally to a trading seat in a different product seems implausible.
At this point do I just bite the bullet and do an mfin in Zurich (not paying 100k p.a. in the US lol) after hitting associate? There seem to be a lot more CDX /ITraxx / liquid tranche seats open in london for whatever reason, and Zurich seems to place quite a few people across both the sell side and buy side in the London market. Alternatively I have gotten a few looks from liquid structured products hedge funds, but those seats seem like moonshots. ABF seems just as miserable as banking.