As I am studying for the CFA, I'm trying to get a feel for what individual trading (if any) I'll be able to do depending on what job I get in industry. If I join a bank as an equity or fixed-income analyst, am I eligible to do *any* private trading of my own? If I trade after a certain window, am I good to go? If I join a publication and publish my opinions there, what individual trading can I do at home? If I am the portfolio manager at a bank (but not running my own hedge fund) what individual trading can I do at home? I saw a thread here earlier from the Finra-registered fellow that spooked me a bit. So wondering, is everyone in Finance just working for salary+bonus and not doing any private trading?
Unfortunately this is tough. I used to work at two fixed income places that didn't really care what people did as long as you didn't trade in the stocks of companies we did business with, but I think that is rare. One was kind of cool - a bunch of underemployed analysts with bloomberg terminals talking about their own trading half the time. Since then my wife's job has kept me away from stocks and I have had some long-term consulting gigs that have kept me away from futures at times. Another thing to worry about is at some places there are gray areas where you can trade but it will be frowned on or cause headaches for compliance people and you have to decide whether it is worth it. A compliance officer at my wife's job actually overstated our restrictions once to avoid some monitoring work for him, but we decided it wasn't worth fighting over.
It really all depends on the firm. If they do you let you trade they will most likely want duplicate statements from your broker. When I was at TROW I had to call TDA and they had to change my acct number and a bunch of things so TROW could get duplicate statements evey month. Some firms like Raymond James will require you and your wife/husband (if you have one) to close all accounts, including IRA's and transfer them over to them which I thought was the biggest crock of shit. So I turmed down the offer down.