Trade Support vs Trading Assistant
Hi all,
does anyone know why some banks differentiate the two? they both sit under MO and in most of the banks (comprising mine) they are meant to be the same.. however some BB (eg BofA and JPM) still differentiate the two. does anyone know how and why? cheers
Trade Support is mostly back/middle office work and has almost nothing to do with a trading career that most people think of. You're most likely going to be debugging operational issues (trade breaks, why orders aren't processing, basically IT related matters) and helping the traders fix any other problems they may have on their trading platform (my trading ticket said this order should have settled 2 days ago but it still hasn't! or why was this entered as a buy? I definitely entered this as as sell). You will rarely, if ever, learn about how to actually play the game of trading itself - sure you'll learn the mechanics of submitting an order, but not the strategy behind itself of why you made that order. You pick this role if you want to stay in an operations career.
Trading Assistant is typically the entry level position to pursue a trading career, effectively an apprenticeship (Junior Trader is another commonly phrased role). While your roles will still be heavily operational and have many overlaps with Trade Support when you first start out (trade reconciliation, P&L accounting, etc), your end goal is to become a full fledged independent trader one day. You'll typically be assigned under a senior trader where you learn about the markets, idea generation, and how to manage your book. You pick this path if you want to pursue a trading career.
Id tend to agree with the above, although for most banks in Europe that's not what happens. In my bank trading assistant and trading support mean the same - actually they're just known as MO. If you are in the right desk there is a lot of exposure to the desk, as they flash T0 PnL and exposures, as well as looking at termsheets, deal review and bookings. as for most of the things, they are really up to the person to decide whether to focus on more ops or more trading and follow the trader even more
and actually, in some oil majors the TA job is not even MO but FO. (no idea why as you can't trade and only book trades for the trader)
Very excellent point, thank you for pointing that out. I should've pointed out I'm based in US and I would imagine there exists some worlds where the title isn't exclusively uniform to all others out there.
No worries and thanks for sharing the point indeed, is interesting to see the comparison also from bank to bank changing according to the geographical area
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