Hello, I know the question is too vague, but I am interested if some former IB trader would reveal what his desk typically made per year( M$ ) and how many traders were involved. Perhaps I am too curious...I need some motivation lately. Thanks in advance.
I am not sure it is wise to use any IB desk revenue figures as motivation. The reason being that traditionally a lot of these desks trade off customer flow which gives them a huge edge that is not available to anyone not privy to that information. In addition if trading commodities they will likely have 'inside' knowledge of inventory, storage and transport etc again giving them a huge edge not available out of this environment. GL
$200 million (revenue i.e. gross trading profit; before salaries, bonus, infrastructure, back office and corporate overhead) Eight people GAT
I know, I know. What would be great is to get close to what they bring back home. If an average bank trader generates 10 M$ for the bank and bring back 2M$, my goal is to try to make 2 M$ as well. This is definitely not my case of course, but it is not out of reach. An other interesting question would be the percentage of their revenue that can be attributed to customer flow trading, but it must be a "touchy" subject...
Mostly programmers. Maybe 20 in sales and 20 in some type of trade support middle office role. Worst losses I saw approached 10m a day during 9/11 aftermath. Minimal. Most of the volatility was in the few spec positions but probably 90% of profit was customer flow. Nothing insidious about that. Banks have customers and make money selling them stuff. Trading is more about positioning your portfolio at opportune times when you can anticipate what your customers are going to want in order to be able to offer it to them at a 'reasonable' price. It's a different view of the business which doesn't apply directly but has interesting implications for retail traders that, ideally, would be more of what is seen on this site. If a serious conversation gains traction I'll put down some of my thoughts.
This is hard to believe. Were you at IB then? I was at a direct competitor and the grapevine had IB in the lower hundred millions.
Here you don't talk about simple analysis of non marketable client orders the banks have on its brokerage book, right? You are talking about deeper analysis of the client needs in order to offer them what they want ( with an edge for the bank...). I guess for most people on this site, bank customer flow trading is simply for example, when an IB trader sees a large HF client posting a limit order on XYZ stock and the trader gets a bit of it before the HF...