- Joined
- 1/26/14
- Messages
- 19
- Points
- 23
An Interesting Development of an Offshore Strategy
I was talking to the head of fixed income Strategy at a major investment bank last week. He described their current hiring pattern as follows:
CDS Market is Dead
I wasn’t paying attention, but the CDS market has died. Once the synthetic CDO market disappeared, it turned out there was little demand for CDS. Apparently only financial names continue to trade with any regularity. No wonder I’m seeing a lot of resumes from people who were working on CDS booking systems.[prbreak][/prbreak]
Other Observations
It’s well known that Data Analytics is booming, and the IT field is proving attractive to many quants who are not seeing career growth in finance.
One senior quant manager recently told me that in recent years, it’s fairly typical for entry level quants to work a couple of years on the trading desk, get disillusioned, and move to the tech industry to exploit their skills in Data Analytics. Note: NYC area saw $4.2 billion in venture funding in 2014, roughly tied with Boston, though well behind San Fran/San Jose.
As always, you can reach me at peter@affinityny.com. LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/peterwagner123
I was talking to the head of fixed income Strategy at a major investment bank last week. He described their current hiring pattern as follows:
- Junior quants – campus recruiting
- Mid-level quants – imported from offshore locations
CDS Market is Dead
I wasn’t paying attention, but the CDS market has died. Once the synthetic CDO market disappeared, it turned out there was little demand for CDS. Apparently only financial names continue to trade with any regularity. No wonder I’m seeing a lot of resumes from people who were working on CDS booking systems.[prbreak][/prbreak]
Other Observations
- Organizations are flatter – the senior ranks have been thinned, there’s less middle management, and everyone is expected to do more. You still need hands-on people to do the work, and that’s where the demand is. There are very few executive director level hires being made, and for every ED opening, there are a lot of good people vying for the role.
- There’s less compensation differentiation. Firms used to maintain significant compensation disparity between top talent and mediocre contributors. Wage compression has made such differentiation difficult. Feeling screwed on comp? Look around you, everyone else is feeling the same way. One senior executive noted to me that the front-office was still able to differentiate their top 10%, but IT and other support groups have lost that ability to a large degree.
- Less management means that individual contributors need to be experts. The folks who are doing well in the current market are able to differentiate themselves with their technical skills or subject matter expertise in those areas with high demand.
- It used to be that prior financial knowledge was highly valued experience. However, in the current market, financial experience is highly discounted. Given the arc of the industry in the past decade, there is currently an oversupply of people in New York with financial experience.
It’s well known that Data Analytics is booming, and the IT field is proving attractive to many quants who are not seeing career growth in finance.
One senior quant manager recently told me that in recent years, it’s fairly typical for entry level quants to work a couple of years on the trading desk, get disillusioned, and move to the tech industry to exploit their skills in Data Analytics. Note: NYC area saw $4.2 billion in venture funding in 2014, roughly tied with Boston, though well behind San Fran/San Jose.
As always, you can reach me at peter@affinityny.com. LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/peterwagner123
