What is S&T?
What is S&T?
What does S&T division mean?
S&T or sales and trading is a division of a bank or financial firm that helps institutions buy and sell financial securities. They are liquidity providers and market makers. They help buyers and sellers find each other especially when moving large amounts of stocks, bonds etcetera.
Financial securities include equities, fixed income products, commodities, crypto currency, interest rates, derivatives, swaps, mortgages, and municipal bonds among other things.
What does the Sales and Trading Division Do?
The jobs of sales and trading is traditional divided among sales people and traders (although some employees do both jobs).
Sales people typically are on the phone with clients understanding their strategies, bringing them trade ideas and market updates, and working with them to transact on what they want to do in the markets. They are responsible for maintaining a relationship with the client so that the trader at the hedge fund or asset manager will choose to call XYZ Bank over ABC Bank when they need to make a trade.
Traders are typically responsible for knowing the product that they trade to an intense level of depth. When a client decides to transact on 1 million shares of Apple stock - the trader will find a way to move the security while having as minimal of a price impact as possible.
Who are the Clients of the S&T Group?
The clients of the sales and trading division are all different types of asset managers such as hedge funds, pension funds, endowment funds, prop trading firms, and even corporations. They do not work for high net worth individual clients.
Preparing for an S&T Interview - check out a popular WSO post about Sales and Trading interviews.
Read more about this topic on WSO:
- Institutional Equity Sales and Trading
- Sales and Trading Best Desks
- Sales and Trading - A Complete Guide
- Sales & Trading Interview Questions - Gekko's Guidance Part 2
- 2018 Sales and Trading Recruiting (Intern)
- Top Sales & Trading desks
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sales and trading, like the people that sell bonds/stocks to big investors/wealthy individuals or the different types of traders like floor traders or prop traders. some traders match up buyers and sellers (market makers) some make money for the firm off the spread (i think? the liars poker type traders... dont know what these are called)
prop traders
Thanks.
Is S&T part of an investment bank?
It's too bad this forum has been reduced to answering questions like what is sales and trading.
Especially bad when the question comes from someone with 207 bananas
hahahaha
Well hopefully AgreeWitMe is just using sarcasm, which would make sense given the ridiculous question asked in the first place.
I want to work now! No, really. I want those 100+ hours/week.I find it funny that this question was asked in the IB forum.
Sales and trading is a more important part of revenue for most BBs. IBD is now only the second.
hahaha
What is the "sales" part of S&T? (Originally Posted: 05/19/2011)
I'm relatively new to this. I know the trading arm investment banks seeks to generate capital by dabbling into the capital markets. I know IBD tries to help companies merge or acquire other companies, secure IPOs, and restructure bankrupt cos. But what exactly is implied by "sales?"
Maintaining client relationships and getting clients to book their trades through your traders. Since all market makers(traders at BBs) offer essentially the same service, the sales team basically markets their bank an tries to sell clients on using a specific banks services. The sales guys are the frontmen put in front of clients, for which the traders book trades and make markets. There's more to it than that I'm sure, but that's a general overview.
dealing with clients casuse your autistic traders can barely hold a conversation
Haha I'd just rather not have to speak to them casuse I can't be bothered.
hahaha +1
You have to remember that IB S&T are designed to service clients, even though the traders may do a lot of prop. You need a client interface for these clients who handle relationships, pitch stuff, act as a liaison to traders etc. It may not be as simple sales as if you worked at a retail store, but you are still a salesman.
The sell side offers research and trading services. The sales guys are selling both and attempt to be the main point of contact for buy side analysts, PMs and traders.
They will also be the point of contact for IPOs, secondary equity offerings, etc. that originate out of the bank. Whenever there is a secondary equity offering announced, I immediately get about 6 calls from the sales guys whose banks are on the books.
In the end, it's just sales. Sales is effectively the same thing wherever you are working, whether that's a car dealer, an insurance company, or a bank.
Besides research and market making, they also sell structured products, or the service of tailoring a structured product to the clients needs. I think the name is pretty self-explanatory. The sales of the S&T departments sells the services/products of the trading groups. Basically market making, research and structured products.
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