Dear monkeys. I am currently summer interning at a London BB in M&A. I have come to the realization a few months ago that the markets are where I want and should be. My background is in real science. I have accumulated some solid knowledge of fundamental drivers of many asset classes oil/gold/equities/indexes/forex and some minimal price action experience.
My preferences would be :
1. futures/options/other trader at home (i have had some surprising performances on a demo account which i will be trying to replicate using part of the internship money [1000% return/GPR 4.1/61% winning trades/max drawdown 30% of NAV/16 days/average leverage of 60x]
2. Macro prop trader somewhere.
3. Market maker in a bank/Equity-Macro researcher in an intellectually honest house (Bernstein ?)
4. Teacher with free time to pursue other ventures.
Dalio & Schwagger got me into this. I also have an issue with the whole business model of M&A, how juniors fit within that and the intellectual mediocrity. i'd rather be judged by the market than some wanabee no-life MBA who's too tired from his 9-3am shift to even think straight.
What is the best way to go around this ?
My background was also in science, and I went from M&A full-time to a macro role (though not trading, but I did spend time in S&T prior to my full-time role and liked it a lot more than M&A). M&A will not get you to where you want to be as the recruiters adding you will be looking for PE/fundamentals based HFs. I would try and make the change for FT - try to get an offer in your bank's S&T division rather than M&A. I can't give advice about how to navigate FT recruiting as I'm not London based.
I would try not to trade on your own initially because you have so much to learn from people who've been innovating in the industry for decades. They've seen different market conditions which have different behaviors.
Thanks for the feedback. i'm not willing to screw with S&T at my current bank. I was more thinking of applying to S&T at other banks ? Is there a good way of spinning a story ? is there a tolerance for people with my credentials ?
There are plenty of people with backgrounds in science in S&T. I would absolutely recommend recruiting for S&T in your own bank though if recruiting in London is anything like New York. When I was an intern (in S&T ) there was a formalized process for transferring between divisions, and most interns who were performing were offered places. There were also very few FT S&T places offered once intern offers had been finalized - it was basically whatever spots weren't filled.
Have you considered starting in Asset Management? Graduate roles for people just out of university are very rare at most funds, but there are some opportunities to enter the macro scene through this path.
Is that what you do ? i don't have any visibility on what juniors do within AM. can i pm you with some further questions on the role ?
I'm not in AM - I'm in research - but I'm happy to chat over private message to give more details.
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