S&t offer - Morgan Stanley London

I have an offer at Morgan Stanley for sales and trading.

I’m set on being a trader, I study maths so I have the technical background.

Question is - what desk should I choose if: - I want greatest chance to get return offer - I want the best exit ops ie hedge funds - want to transition to quant trading in future

I am leaning to equity derivs since I know a lot about the topic and I believe it would help for exit ops, but also thinking about volatility trading and rates.

Any comments would be appreciated.

12 Comments
 

Not sure if you've realised but you've pretty much doxxed your identity through having your email as your username.

GZ on MS though

 

Is it for summer ?
What is your time line of interviews ?
Thanks n congrats

 

Yeah, applied on September 1st done the initial tests and hirevue, telephone interview was on October 3rd, heard back 2 weeks later for AC invite. Received offer day after AC

 

Math doesn’t make you a good trader, not a diss, just a fact, nothing the modern IB does is rocket science anymore.

Impossible for us to know where you’d have greatest chance of return offer. I’d just pick the desk where you connected best with someone and one where there’s a need for an A1. On the other two reasons IMHO:

-D1/Index Trading
-Central Risk Book trading/QIS
-Equity Vol/Single stock derivs

Curious why you’d want to be a quant trader?

 

Fair enough, that is another reason why I want to do quant trading as I’d leverage my technical background more.

Also prop trading firms known to have much better culture.

Nevertheless, I still think I’d be a better trader than salesman, not to say I couldn’t do well in sales.

Thanks for the information, how would I go about finding out where there’s a need for an A1, not sure if asking them is “correct” way?

 
Most Helpful

think of how you want to define "quant trading".

is it fully/semi systematic trading that traders build algo and maintain the platform? Or is it some kind of click-trading that needs game-theory mindset/derivatives knowledge? If former is the case look for CRB in Equities, or SMM on other rates/credit/Fx. If the latter, definitely go to vols desks.

Just my 2 cent: from personal observation in our floor, I think the former case tend to exit better to the "quant trading" companies ppl refer to, like CitSec, Virtu, Tower,,,etc, while latter tend to exit more to HFs as Vol traders like some of the pods on BIg4, or some famous macro funds like Brevan Howard or Capula(whether its rate, equities, fx..whatever)

which industry and products are you interested in? I think that's the first step you need to think of 

 

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