S&T Intern Excel Knowledge
Hey guys, I'm starting as an S&T SA in 1-2 weeks. I'm confident about anything when it comes to finance but idk how to translate that to actual work. I've done heavy research on S&T internships across WSO and the internet but can't find anything about excel. How knowledgeable do we need to be at excel? I understand shortcuts and formulas are important, but will my desk expect me to be a frequent user of VBA on the job? What do interns actually do in excel for their desks? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.
Bump.
Bump
Full disclosure, I’m also doing a summer in s&t starting in a few weeks, but here’s my two cents. (Interned on a trading floor last summer).
I hate to be that guy, but, it depends. If you’re trading cash products usually you won’t need much, maybe limited excel/VBA. If you’re on a MBS type desk, VBA is def used but nothing you can’t figure out on your own. When you go down the liquidity spectrum to exotics, structuring, and derivatives, there is a lot more technical excel/VBA knowledge. With that said, if your desk took you on they’ll give you an opportunity to learn those skills, just ask knowledgeable questions and be interested in the work and you should be alright.
the better prepared you are...the better chances of an internship becoming an offer for FT.
Some desks require / don't care about junior staff knowing how to code...other desks require it...you don't know which is which. However, learning to code is not that hard...if you are intelligent and put in a little time, you will be able to learn VBA very easily....if not...you are not.
so, i suggest you pickup a copy of VBA for dummies and start doing some coding projects.
For example, here are some Excel / VBA projects you should be able to bang out in a couple hours (and if it takes you longer, then its a good learning project)
1) given a list of significant words, count the occurrence of each word in a text stream (for example, a speech from somebody at the Fed).
2) given a list of eurodollar futures prices, expiry dates, and FOMC meeting dates, calculate how much hike/cut is priced into each FOMC meeting
3) given 2 years worth of price history for 3 similar securities, calculate the correlation statistics between the securities price history, and find the best hedge ratio for a position in any one of the securities, where the only accessible hedge is a position in the other securities. use charts to explain your results. If you add more securities, can you get a better hedge? How so?
4) given a list of securities with price changes, sort the list by the change, and make the sort update in realtime without the user needing to click.
there are lots of other things you can do, but these are basic starters that you should be able to do very quickly (and if it takes you a long time to do, then you need to learn more excel)...these should get you thinking about how to use excel, and how to use VBA
Most of the above you can do in a combination of native excel formula functions, and some VBA. you should learn when native excel formulas are better to use over VBA, and vice versa (so you don't waste hours writing VBA code when an excel formula would do the job in a couple minutes...and vice versa)
As someone who's been in the industry for a while, would you say these VBA skills are more/less used across more technical desks like structured credit, MBS, FX options vs. other less-liquid asset classes like Munis and/or HY credit?
Interning this summer on a HY Muni desk and the projects you mentioned definitely seem doable but with considerable "google-ing", and I would describe my VBA skills as novice at best.
i speciically chse these projects because they will force you to learn aspects of VBA and excel that will be useful to ALL the desks in fixed income
Update: Just found out I'll be working on a G10 rates desk. It's one of the more quantitative desks at the firm and focuses heavily on derivatives trading. I'm assuming I need to brush up on my quick mental math and VBA. If anybody has anything else to add it would be appreciated.
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