Traders working in a bank, question for you!

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MAmijee232

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Hello,

i was just curious to know what are your working hours? Specifically if you working in an investment bank. Also, do you have to do research and manage your positions prior to the day i.e. during the night when you come back from work?

thank you.
 
My current job is as a Manufacturing Engineering Team Leader. I have to manage all of my positions and put in my stances during the night. It takes me about 2-3 hrs per night of research and planning.

I also use Gorilla Trades to try and gain a little advantage and advice and try to narrow my picks before I make them.
 
The traders in my old shop worked 6am - 5pm. They were out the door pretty much as soon as the markets closed, but were in early to set up for the day. Of course it depends whether you then regard the obligatory after-work socialising as business or pleasure!
 
I work in Hedge Fund and have markets running at home and in the office 24hrs/day.
Wake up at 5am and check screens in my study. Leave for office at 6am. Do not take lunch but leave office at 6pm and head home. Keep audible alert with me until I go to sleep. I pump prices onto my mobile through esginal quotrek and get signals sent to me from PC via text message if out of office.
It is full time Monday to Friday but I do not mind it, get used to it and would not want to do something else.
 
Top One!!!..... twalker, and I thought you were an average (albeit enlightened) punter.... like most of us! We are not worthy!

Hook Shot
 
I use to have to be in for 7.00 am morning meeting, and was out the door, by 5pm. Most interest I ever took at nights, was just checking to see where Dow & S&P closed. ( excluding the period I was trading GDR's - then I'd have to be available for calls trade US hours with some Jap thrown in)
 
An interesting question I would like to put to bank etc, workers is -
How do the big players such as banks make their plays
Is it with mere MAs and stochastics etc like us mere mortals or do they have super dooper black box systems that have cost millions and nobody unauthorised is allowed to touch.
Perhaps they scan the market of Phd graduates to engineer a system.
I think I am right in saying UBS got some young physics post grads from Los Alamos to engineer a financial system back in the early 90s ??
 
Last edited:
Pat494 said:
An interesting question I would like to put to bank etc, workers is -
How do the big players such as banks make their plays
Is it with mere MAs and stochastics etc like us mere mortals or do they have super dooper black box systems that have cost millions and nobody unauthorised is allowed to touch.
Perhaps they scan the market of Phd graduates to engineer a system.
I think I am right in saying UBS got some young physics post grads from Los Alamos to engineer a financial system back in the early 90s ??
Click to expand...

I think any trader at a bank who claimed to make money using charts would be out of the door. Nothing beats fundamental research. Why do you think any given bank will employ (maybe) 60-70 equity analysts and one token chartist?

Investment banks equity departments will essentialy have 2 types of traders - the market makers who trade from flow, and the prop traders who will trade from research and flow. read my lips.. NO CHARTS !!!

When I worked at UBS in the mid 90's, they had a load of American guys over working on some black box pricing system - writing warrants, options etc. Loads of books based on Wolframs Mathmatica (?) - I could be wrong, but I dont think any of those guys were left when the warrants/options expired... .....

CT
 
CityTrader said:
I think any trader at a bank who claimed to make money using charts would be out of the door. Nothing beats fundamental research. Why do you think any given bank will employ (maybe) 60-70 equity analysts and one token chartist?

Investment banks equity departments will essentialy have 2 types of traders - the market makers who trade from flow, and the prop traders who will trade from research and flow. read my lips.. NO CHARTS !!!

When I worked at UBS in the mid 90's, they had a load of American guys over working on some black box pricing system - writing warrants, options etc. Loads of books based on Wolframs Mathmatica (?) - I could be wrong, but I dont think any of those guys were left when the warrants/options expired... .....

CT
Click to expand...

For me, I couldn't keep the tight stops and risk I employ now if I didn't use the charts (whether to predict or just to justify cutting losses).

Do you think the advantage of larger capital/deeper pockets help the trading of fundamentals alone or can the same tight ship be kept in this way also?

I know I would lose alot more alot quicker without charts.
 
wasp said:
For me, I couldn't keep the tight stops and risk I employ now if I didn't use the charts (whether to predict or just to justify cutting losses).

Do you think the advantage of larger capital/deeper pockets help the trading of fundamentals alone or can the same tight ship be kept in this way also?

I know I would lose alot more alot quicker without charts.
Click to expand...

I use charts to see only where a price has been, where the action was, not to try and predict where it will go. Hedge funds, PM, and banks move prices, not a load of punters reacting to chart levels. Maybe futures are more chartable as more people believe the hype? but individual equities? forget it.
 
as one of the (former) top fx traders at morgan stanley told me: 'i dont need a chart to tell me that the next round number is going to be a 'f*&%$#@g resistance level'

well, at least he must have had an awareness of ta to know about resistance????
 
I read once that 95% of FX trades were by the banks, amongst themselves - i.e only 5% were end users. Those numbers are probably reversed for equities. Obviously hedge funds have evend out those numbers but round numbers are resistance levels because of human nature, not because of charts.
 
CityTrader said:
I think any trader at a bank who claimed to make money using charts would be out of the door. Nothing beats fundamental research. Why do you think any given bank will employ (maybe) 60-70 equity analysts and one token chartist?

CT
Click to expand...

Thx CT very interesting. Not really what I was expecting though.
I remember from my working in a stockbrokers it was very amateurish. The partners rarely got in much before 11s, off to lunch at12ish, back 3ish invariably drunk. The one I worked for even fell out of his luxury chair one day and had to be helped up - aaah happy days. Guessing and inside info was the modus operandi. Assuming they could remember anything at all !!
 
Quite a big difference between a 'stockbrokers' and an investment bank, I think. My old boss remembered the days when pre-'Big Bang' and working for a UK firm it was all boozy lunches and a nod and a wink, but where we worked together, for a US IB, it was pretty frantic stuff. You got paid, but they got their pound of flesh.
 
These days everybody looks at charts if they cover the main markets that have listed derivatives.
Only have to look at IB reports to see that along with the fundamental waffle there is always some tech analysis. The advantage of being at the bank is that you see the cutomer flow which makes it considerably easier to make money
 
twalker said:
These days everybody looks at charts if they cover the main markets that have listed derivatives.
Only have to look at IB reports to see that along with the fundamental waffle there is always some tech analysis. The advantage of being at the bank is that you see the cutomer flow which makes it considerably easier to make money
Click to expand...


Exactly - trading from flow. Buying the last part of an ongoing customers order.
 
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