And they're going to ring around, and try to get all the mms to step inside eachother. And some bank is going to want the business for 'relationship' purposes. Etc etc. Commissions, flows, and screw their internal facilitation desk.
Everything on a MM desk is pretty much automated nowadays. The job is mostly risk management, watching/maintaining/tweaking your Algos that make markets is milliseconds and skewing your exposure if you have a view (basically prop trading vs clients as you see fit). The only areas where you will ever take a call or manually make a market is in the rates space or negotiating give ups.
basis trading stock loan block trades corporate actions / tenders passing rolls to various counterparties plenty of calls to make in equities / equity derivs.
Didn't expect this many replies. Very insightful, thank you! To be honest I am still not quite sure how to approach the interview question haha. That being said reading this is very interesting, thank you .
Also lots of energy and ED option trades are over the phone. I'd take a pass on the India question. Not because it's hard but because the underlying isn't even measurable. All numbers for the population of India are just approximations. Even the word 'population' is vague. Does this include tourists or expats? I think an informative discussion can be had on why you would decline to make a market that still shows good critical thinking ability. I'm sometimes asked to make a market in products that are just too dangerous or where the risk is just not hedgeable and I have to decline. Nothing wrong with that.
I agree. The cost of being wrong can be much higher than the spread you -may- make. Give away a week of p/l from one dumb quote.