Assistant trader starting salary NY (MBS) 50K...Am I getting hosed?
more boutique i-bank, but publicly traded so not too small. Got a job as an ABS trading assnt. and interned for the bank (for free) last summer. They started me on a 50K base. Appt and bills are at least 2500/mo. Never expected a bb i-banking salary of 80k, but damn. I hope i can at least survive. Are they just trying to keep young guys hungry and not spoil them? What are the avg annual jumps for rookies, I was thinking like 10k? Bonuses wouldn't really make too much sense bc I doubt i'll be trading firm capital for at least a couple yrs. What am I looking at guy?
50k is in the ballpark of what i'd expect. Although obviously everyplace is different, usually the title "trading assistant" is a middle-office-type job on the sell-side and isnt expected to develop into an actual trader. usually the people who actually go on to trade at a dealer/bank come from the analyst class. You seem to say above that this job is different but even if it isnt, its no big deal I started in the same job and you will get great exposure by just watching and listening to the traders. My starting salary was 45k and my first bonus was a whopping $2,500.
ha yea thanks. this bank is a little dif. we don't have "analyst classes" and i would be set up right next to my trader... they said I could maybe be trading odd lots w/ in a year. How long did it take you, or ppl you know to actually trade firm capital... are you happy w/ abs? Would you pref another mkt? maybe a bigger size product like agencies etc..
I was a trading assitant for 3 years, the last one of which I was also an analyst and providing some ideas. But this was at a small hedge fund, not a bank and there really wasnt any balance sheet available to let trading assistants start trading. I had to leave that job before i got to trade on my own...all told it was about 5 years from the time I got a job on Wall St. to the time when i was taking risk of my own and it wasnt until after I did very well in the crash of 2008 that i was trading really significant sizes. On the sell-side i have heard all types of stories...I definitely have heard of people who were trading in a year or so but i dont really know what the average is. Most of the sell-side traders i talk to are older except for a couple of exceptions that are often in smaller markets..for eg Goldman has a 23 year old CAD rates trader.
I am also a bit confused about your saying that you will "trade the firms capital". traders on the sell-side make markets and take risk around that...usually when a person ends up trading at a young age its because a market-making seat comes open and the person is in the right place at the right time.
I dont really know the ABS market very well...I got into it a little bit in 2009 because I did alot of work on exploring the opportunities created by TALF but I never ended up trading it. My expertise is in liquid products like rates, FX, and stock index futures....ABS to me dosent really qualify as "liquid" under normal circumstances. Dosent mean its not a great market to trade, its just a different skill set.
The ABS is usually a small operation of a few traders. There is not a lot of risk in terms of prepayments when it comes to ABS, but the traders do a lot of volume. I know of a ABS desk of 4 traders that will pull in around 85MM-100MM this year.
Corporis pariatur rerum illum et suscipit et alias. Ut qui fugiat laudantium architecto animi. Natus ut voluptatem quo iusto sit est. Ipsa qui asperiores ea accusamus facere. Cumque aliquid cupiditate dignissimos unde dolorem et. Repellendus dolorum ipsum non voluptatibus nihil.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...