Sales and Trading S&T

A trading floor runs on the market's clock. You are in before 7, read overnight moves in Asia and Europe, and help put together the morning call where the desk agrees on what matters today. When the market opens the day becomes a stream of client requests, prices, and small decisions made in seconds.

As a junior on a trading desk you run the book's spreadsheets, book trades, reconcile positions, check risk at the end of the day, and price the simpler requests yourself once someone trusts you. On a sales desk you write the morning note, send color to clients, take orders, and learn which client cares about what. By late afternoon the market closes, risk is checked, and the day is mostly done.

The first year is about being useful to the desk without being in the way. You earn trust in small units: a correct price, a fast answer, a recap with no mistakes.

What juniors hand in

• Morning notes and market color emails for clients.
• Price quotes and runs on the products the desk makes markets in.
• End-of-day P&L and risk reports, and position reconciliations.
• Trade bookings, and fixes when a booking is wrong.
• Spreadsheets and small scripts that the desk actually uses (pricers, monitors, client lists).
• Trade ideas and pitches for salespeople to take to clients.

Rates

Government bonds, interest rate swaps, and options on rates. Driven by central banks and macro data. Large, liquid, and math-heavy at the options end.

Credit

Corporate bonds, credit default swaps, and loans, investment grade and high yield. Closer to company fundamentals than most desks, and a natural route to credit investing.

Equities

Cash equities, equity derivatives, and prime brokerage for hedge funds. Cash is about execution and client flow; derivatives is about volatility and structure.

FX

Currencies, spot and options. Trades around the clock, highly electronic in the liquid pairs, and sensitive to every macro headline.

Commodities

Energy, metals, and agriculture. Smaller teams, physical-market quirks, and clients that include producers and airlines, not only funds.

Securitized products

Mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities. Technical, cash-flow heavy, and a real specialty once you are in it.

Sales, trading, structuring, research

Across every desk the same roles repeat. Traders take risk and make prices. Sales covers the clients. Structurers design products for specific client needs. Desk strategists and research write the view. Flow desks trade standard products at volume; exotic or structured desks trade bespoke ones with fewer, larger trades.

Institutional clients: asset managers, hedge funds, pension funds, insurers, central banks, and corporates hedging currency or rate exposure. They come to the bank to buy and sell at a fair price and to hear what the market is doing.

Inside the bank you serve the desk's P&L and its risk limits. Your senior traders and salespeople are your real clients in year one.

Typically 55 to 70 hours a week, front-loaded. In before 7, out between 5 and 7 most days. Markets close, so the day does. Weekends are usually yours, and late nights are rare outside of real market events.

The intensity is inside market hours, not after them. A volatile week feels long at 50 hours. Desks that trade around the clock, like FX, hand the book across time zones rather than keep you late.

Later and a little less rigid than IB. Big banks usually open summer analyst applications in late summer and fall before the internship, so the junior fall is the main season, with some banks opening earlier alongside IB. Many banks hire into a markets division and place you on a desk during the summer.

Interviews test whether you follow markets and can think on your feet: what moved this week and why, a trade or stock pitch, mental math, and fit. Networking matters less for getting in and more for where you land, because desk placement is often decided by who wants you.

Freshman and sophomore year

Start following markets daily. Pick two or three asset classes and know why they moved this week. Apply to sophomore and diversity programs in markets.

Sophomore spring and summer

Coffee chats with traders and salespeople across desks. Learn the language: yields, spreads, duration, options basics.

Junior fall

Applications open at most banks. Apply early: review is rolling. Some banks open earlier, alongside IB, so check each one.

Within days to weeks

Online assessment (numerical tests, sometimes mental math timed) and a recorded video interview.

Weeks after

Superday: several interviews with traders and salespeople from different desks, with market questions, a pitch, and mental math.

Junior summer

Rotations across desks, then a placement. The return offer is often tied to a specific desk that wants you.

You would rather watch a screen than build a deck, and you like knowing by the close whether you were right. You read markets news because you want to, not because an interviewer will ask.

You enjoy people and quick judgment more than long documents, and you can stay calm when something goes wrong in public. You want a job that is intense inside market hours and mostly yours outside them.

Not for you if you want deep work on one company over months, if loud rooms and constant interruptions drain you, or if you want the broadest set of exits. Electronic trading has shrunk many seats, so if you love the markets but also love code, look at quant first.

• How every major asset class trades and what moves it.
• Fast mental math and pricing under pressure.
• Risk: duration, delta, carry, and how a position loses money.
• Talking to clients clearly, briefly, and with a view.
• Excel and often Python or VBA for desk tools.
• Staying calm and accurate when the market is not.

Next to IB

IB is slower and client-driven, with longer hours and more transferable modeling skills. S&T is market-driven, finished by the close, and narrower.

Next to Quant

Quant trading is systematic, has no clients, and tests math and code far harder. S&T is more discretionary and more about people.

Next to HF

Hedge funds take their own risk for returns over months. Bank traders make markets for clients and manage inventory risk over days.

Next to ER

Research writes the view on companies. Sales and trading acts on market flow and prices it.

Most people who leave go to the buy side in a markets seat: macro, credit, or multi-strategy hedge funds, asset managers on the trading or portfolio side, or prop trading. Fintech and market structure roles also hire traders.

Exits are narrower than from IB, because PE does not recruit from trading desks. The trade-off is a direct line into markets roles and a career many people stay in for decades.

Trading is like the movies: shouting and gut calls.

Most flow is electronic now. The job is pricing, risk management, and client service, with long stretches of careful routine.

You need to be a math genius.

You need fast, reliable arithmetic and comfort with probability. The heavy math lives in quant roles and on structuring desks.

S&T is a backup for people who did not get IB.

It is a different job for a different temperament. Desks can tell when you want to be somewhere else.

You pick your desk when you apply.

At many banks you apply to the division and are placed during the summer. Who wants you matters as much as what you asked for.