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...i think the pay can be good, but the product is less sophisticated and therefore the people generally arent as smart. At least thats the stereotype.
is that the spreads are so small, it is hard for the desk to be profitable without tremendous volume
and where there is volume the bank will put it down to its name and rep rather than the trader's skills and bonuses suffer
I think equities could be a lot of fun actually and that it just gets a bad rap.
and as for volume/margins...look at treasuries, spot fx, vanilla swaps....
Isn't it because equities trading is a bit simple and is becoming more automated (program trading, smart execution, etc) that's why there were all those equities layoffs last year right?
there have been fixed income layoffs this year.
yes it can be automated. so can large swaths of fixed income trading. and i'm not sure equities trading is 'simple', but probably not as quantitive as other disciplines. it's like saying fx Spot Trading is 'simple'....which it most definitely is not.
...it would be pretty difficult to automate fixed income trading right now as the electronic platforms people use to trade (brokertec, Tradeweb, and espeed) are still young and do not lend themselves to program trading. A Vast majority of treasury bond trades are still done over the phone. Also running leveraged money is a little more complicated in fixed income as you have to worry about financing your position by borrowing or lending your bonds after u've bought or sold them. The business of borrowing/lending bonds (called repo trading) is still essentially in the stone age and is rife w/ "wild west" tactics like short squeezes and other tricks...in other words it is way more of an art then a science that some computer nerd could automate. Its just not like a stock trade...u have to worry about financing, carry, forward pricing, etc....trading treasury bonds isnt just buy'em/sell'em.
That said their have been fixed income layoffs and may continue to be because there has been virtually no volatility in the US yield curve and therefore trading volumes have been weak. Its not the big game in town right now...
wow, wow, wow. tell me more about repo trading bonds. anything w/ "wild west" tactics sounds exciting.
there can be short squeezes in any cash bond trading, b/c you have this funding aspect. it's true in credit as well as in rate.
repo is a fun thing to trade, but quant it is not.
from the comments above, i feel that reference is mainly to cash equities, whats the situation in equity derivatives or is it the same.
interested in this as well
Brought back from the dead after 4 years hahaha. Just do a search there are a bunch of decent threads on this.
Equity research>credit research... Fucking idiot up above saying that it's for dumbs
Lulz, in that case I have to agree. Although I think Options traders are the tops when it comes to brain matter
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