Sales & Trading Post-MBA

I am a full-time MBA student at a top 20 school. Prior to business school, I worked in S&T middle office for 4 years. Once I got to business school, I was trying to go for IB, but wasn't able to lock in an internship offer (and it's tougher now to secure any internship with current market conditions).

After thinking about it, I want to go for S&T front office upon graduation, but I know IBs do not offer Summer Associate positions for S&T anymore. With my S&T MO experience, would it still be possible for me to secure a full-time S&T Associate (front office) position when I graduate from business school in spring 2021?

4 Comments
 

Will be quite tough. Typically most banks have small associate classes for sales and trading (post financial crisis). At least in the US it seems that only BBs have an established pipeline for hiring. A fair amount of hiring is happening from MFE programs and less so from MBAs due to the more technical nature of the work. I think the key here is to really network and meet people in person. What would help is if you have a good understanding of a specific asset class to really demonstrate a strong understanding.

 
Most Helpful

you should be more specific. each S&T desk and product is unique. Traders become HIGHLY specialized. This is why the skillset doesn't translate to much of anything outside S&T.

So, do you want to be a salesman, or a trader? Assuming trader, what product do you want to trade? why that product? have you traded that product before? have you traded a similar product before? are you interested in the underlying market dynamics?

for example, interest rates traders are immersed in global macro politics, news flow all day long...some have strong quant skills...often sports are good equivalents...kindof like tennis..lots of hits...some winner, some losers, but you keep hitting the ball with everything you got (just an example, but it fits well).

its rare to know if you'll be a good trader without having traded before...very little in life prepares you for that...so you should be day trading already in your personal account.

if not, why not?

 

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