Can anyone shed some light on the difference between an Institutional Salesperson, Institutional Sales Trader, and a plain old Equity Trader (sell-side). I am particularly wondering what the duties of the Sales Trader are and what firms employ. I assume it is a hybrid role covering duties of both the sales and trading side of the business. Seems like the term, however, is thrown around kind of loosely. TIA SP
OK it is kind of a dumb question but the answer remains stubbornly elusive. Hate to respond to my own post but is there really no one out there that knows the subtleties between these positions? On a side note, sounds like there is some severe carnage on Wall Street with hundreds of floor traders being let go as more markets go electronic. sp
Insitutional sales- calls and opens accounts...does not execute trades. straight up sales person. phone jockey. Sales trader-Like a retail broker but institutional. they normally dont cold call to open accounts becuse they have to follow the market, and execute orders. they handle clients, and place trades. Equity trader-Makes a market or simply watches the market to execute orders...does not have a sale role excpt when entertaining clients after hours. Takes orders from a head trader, and normally watches a basket of stocks.
An inst sales trader is a sellside trader that that buys and sells financial instruments on behalf of inst clients. An inst salesperson tries to get inst clients to buy financial instruments currently in his or her firm's inventory. There job is to also generate new business. In other words, the traders do the actual trading, while the salespeople sell.
let me emphasize a bit mroe Institutional sales- "hi bob, this is mark from JP moregan we dont have you on our client list and wanted to ask what type of securities your companies mostly deals in, we like to have you as a customer" Instsales trader- "Bob, this is joe from J.P morgan...I work with mark, I understand you are looking for a price on brasil34s...i have a price of 118.5x 118.65...i can get you 5 million" Just a trader- "fred,mark has an order for 500,000 GOOG for xyz fund...Buy...dont move the market."
Thanks all. excellent analysis Dac. That is pretty much what I thought but didn't know the extent of the sales trader's marketing efforts. But it seems a lot of firms don't have sales traders, the order goes from the inst. salesperson to the executional trader. Anyone know if sales trading positions are becoming more / less common on the sell side. And is anyone hiring? It does sound like a good gig! sp
Were you ever a Sales Trader on a bulge Bracket desk? I covered Institutions for 10 years. Now I have to actually work for a living! This thread was about Sales-Trader vs Salesman, not GS PROP. I agree a large desk does not need 20 Sales-Traders when 10 can do the job. Now a days, BUY SIDE traders can execute a million shares on an algo for without having to deal with some mook sales-trader, or pay .03 - .04 institutional commission. It's still a very cushy job with minimal stress levels and a PHAT expense account. el surdo
Although it is not worthing arguing about, I mentioned GS prop only after you expanded the topic of conversation to all wall street jobs when you proclaimed that inst sales trading is the best job on wall street.