Lateraling from Trading to IB vs. IB to Trading

I recently finished up my undergrad and I'm interested in trading, investment banking, investment analyst (particularly within hedge funds) type roles. Realistically, which of these roles is going to provide better lateral opportunities down the road and which would be the most ideal to start with? For example, would a trader be able to lateral to an IB VP position after the same amount of years spent in an IB analyst/associate stint, and would that work the other way around? It would make sense that more fundamental roles in a hedge fund would probably give the most all around translatable experience for exit ops without taking a pay cut, but I don't know that for a fact.

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Completely unheard for what you are describing (mid level trader to mid level IB and vice versa).  Those are completely different jobs so there’s little chance someone would hire a trader as a VP in banking when they could just hire someone with as much relevant experience (ie 0) as an analyst.  Can do an mba and recruit for associate roles in the other division, that’s about it.  Hedge funds dont really provide exit opportunities- they are the opportunity that people who want to end up at.  

 

I get the logic behind that. Assuming I don't want to shoot myself in the foot with more student loans. What would provide the best lateral opportunities into IB? Or if I'm more familiar with trading would it just be a better bet to go straight for trading and hedge fund roles as I'm assuming IB would hold me back in potential earnings and professional experience for years based on everything I've been told?

 

The only instance I could see this playing out is for the in between positions like syndicate. People do move from capital markets origination to syndicate to sales and vice versa.

Can you move directly from ECM to equity sales? Sometimes, but the other way around doesn’t really work. Some senior bankers with a lot of ECM experience can move to equity sales roles because of their company-level knowledge. Trading doesn’t lend itself to these types of moves. Completely different skillset.

 

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