You should too- "...RBC Asset Management Inc. is an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada. ...", which means their results are rolled into the parent. RBC's FX is done through the bank, therefore, no matter how wildly profitable any unit may be, you need to look at the parents Income Statement before making profitability claims.
Dude get real ... RBC is the largest most successful bank in Canada and they are part of a 5 bank monopoly on the country. their foreign exchange traders trade for many reasons beyond just straight outright foreign exchange profits. Do you know what goes on in the institutional trading departments of a HUGE bank like this? Obviously NOT because much of the trading is for hedging and for large clients not for bank profits from market to market.
Trading desks at banks are notoriously unprofitable from a shareholder standpoint. Goldman, the trader's trader, has wild swings in profitability and its stock has gone nowhere in the past few years. So why do it? Because all banks needs another source of revenue, and maybe another way to gloat. Just like IBK, fat bonuses and perks make the FX/cap markets desk highly lucrative to the employees themselves, but leave nothing for us investors. It's the best job in the biz if you can get it!!
I Agree Samson the money is to be made helping other instis hedge international exposure. Having said that, the worst way to make money in my opinion is for firms to do their own prop trading, a recipe for uneven earnings and fat paychecks Hear about those bank mergers? they're on the backburner, AGAIN
I worked for RBC as a broker many moons ago, they are a top notch company. I left because they where to greedy!
Institutional 30% Retail 70% I preferred the big money trades but the Canadian players where pretty hard to get too, a very conservative bunch and they stuck together. RBC was good though because I could get lots of hot ipo's and that helped me get some whales.
I guess that's a major factor in joining a firm, whether the I-banking division gives you pieces of IPOs, something a smaller firm wouldn't have much of. How do you land an insti? I'm assuming you're not cold calling during dinner time... I remember telemarketing for one of "you guys" when I was in school, some of you were such arrogant pricks
LOL Yes we were arrogant jerks that's for sure. $250000 monthly paychecks did that to a lot of people ! If you had access to the hottest IPO's getting the best clients was simply a matter of calling the trading desk or dept of a major company or fund and asking them to give you a shot if you gave them your allocation of shares. A lot of time the institutional dept at RBC would call my manager and yell at him telling me to lay off but I never cared I just kept calling. Mostly though I would do record searches at trust companies to see WHO owned SIZE of similiar issues and call them directly. I never minded selling to institutions but I never felt comfortable selling to retail clients and thus left the business.