Incoming Fixed Income S&T Analyst - What should I be learning now?
Incoming fixed income full-time S&T analyst with limited direct S&T experience, what should I be reading/learning in preparation? I follow the markets, have a solid business background including two internships in IB.
For the full-time role, should I be reviewing statistics or calculus? Teaching myself VBA? Reading textbooks? Thanks
Always good to know VBA. I think your best bet is to reach out to someone in your team. 1) Shows interest 2) you get specific advice from who matters most.
Good luck
How in depth should I know VBA?
I'm not a comp-sci guy, but is SQL ever used with data on the floor for a regular trader (not quant/strat)? I guess I could try to learn that too
I wouldn’t worry about advanced mathematics, you’ll have a desk strat that does that shit. Just keep up with markets, have an opinion about your product, prime yourself with fabozzi books, and learning VBA is always great. Go into this with a strong mindset as FI people eat nails for breakfast
Thanks.
I don't need to know all about bond curves or probability of default and stuff? I know equities and FX options has Greek letters, is that stuff applicable or necessary for bond trading?
I mean if you got this gig and don’t understand duration, convexity, etc. then yah I’d say you should probably learn that shit. But there’s ZERO way you’re going to be able to learn IG/HY CDX curves, IRS, cash treasuries, or futures curves really without a Bloomberg. Just know products at a high level, you’ll learn on the job, everyone on the floor already knows you won’t know shit
Bumpity bump bump bump
I worked in S&T some time ago. I only worked on macro (rates) desks, so can only really provide insight there. In hindsight, what I felt was my greatest weakness was my confidence and efficiency in completing projects; swap/swaption trade screeners, structured products pricing tools, back-testing strategies etc. So I would recommend getting used to quickly building VBA/macros in that context, as opposed to more conventional "accounting/IBD" ways of using Excel. Most banks have been pretty rubbish in using their flow data/tracking client interest systematically, especially for voice (typically swap/efp spreads, fx options, swaptions, minor G10/EM etc), so a "big data" mindset is useful for sales desks in particular. Python/SQL etc would be apt. You typically won't be given a book immediately as a junior in trading or clients to talk to on IB, as you need to above all do regulatory exams, learn basics or maybe do rotations, so you will mostly be assessed by your project work. You can get access to fx spot, bond futures, cash benchmarks, even G3 swaps pretty easily online without BBG. Wouldn't be bad idea to play wrangle around with the data and pre-empt some practice projects.
Is it worth it to re-teach myself Calc, Stat or regression from my first years on campus? Or no need?
Thanks!
As someone above has said, you'll only require a breadth understanding of how to price the products, enough to make you seem like you totally understand it. Stats I say is more useful. You'll find regression being used in rates, fx and credit extremely heavily. Bit esoteric, but for IRS and bonds I'd learn about principle components analysis (a way to hedge out duration (PC1), curve (PC2), to trade PC3, which is cointegrated/mean-reverting.
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