IG credit at jefferies

ggnowad

DurbanDiMangusThe main criteria to consider are whether you are providing distinguishable value to the customer base of a corporate bond desk...there are two types of clients 1) passive 2) active. Passive long-only (pension funds, insurance cos, long-only asset managers) care about your distribution/syndicate and new-issue machine, which is largely correlated to your relationships with large corporate clients, primarily due to your commercial and investment banking platform, large corporate loan capabilities etc. The active clientele --hedge funds (both equity and credit trade CDS product for example), some family offices, more active l/s asset managers (e.g. 130/30 mutual fund guys)-- will care about your secondary trading abilities much more, how much liquidity you offer, your ability to take down their risk and print big trades (read: large balance sheet), your CDS prowess (where most credit active l/s trading resides) and honestly how smart your sales/trading/research machine is relative to the Street.

Thanks for the thorough reply. I'm not too familiar with how credit research works on a trading desk but what you describe sounds more like straight trading capabilities of a bank. How would a credit analyst work in conjunction with traders with respect to IG names? Would the analyst just give risk opinions for the traders to hedge exposure?

are you 100% on the desk (e.g. "Desk Analyst" or "Trading Strategist") or publishing notes to clients?

ggnowad

DurbanDiMangusfundamental research of names being covered by your desk, trying to identify long / short opportunities...

Would comp be tied to trading gains/losses? Sorry not very familiar with how a trading desk works..Also my ultimate goal would be to end up in investment management, and am guessing that this would be a viable route to take to end up at a fund? Thanks for all the insight.

Yes--Pros: Bonus will be tied to your trader's book and your overall desk's profitability; You are working towards that profitability; all HF clients will know you as a specialist; etc... Cons: you are your trader's whore, and if he needs to lay off a shit position guess who's going to be blasting out the bloomberg to the world's biggest HFs with a sleazy sales-like note about why a company with a ton of leverage and poor biz prospects should trade like GE! (exaggerating). I've received some bloombergs like that and in my mind, while we all know the game the sellside plays, that desk analyst's name is kind of soiled.