Advice Needed: Market Risk FT or FO trading internship for breaking into AM

[myn_gc]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to humbly ask for an opinion - I've been offered FT Market Risk at GS as well as a year-long trading internship at a MM for their FX trading desk. I personally am not looking to trading as a long term career, but was looking to move into Asset Management one day. I'm lateraling in from a technology job I've worked at another BB for close to a year, as these two opportunities came up.

My original plan was to take a finance masters (or MBA) to break into asset management, until the two opportunities came around. I do feel that either of these will get me closer to AM than staying as a technologist in a BB, but feel free to let me me know if quitting so early is bad for my resume.

I was mainly wondering if it even made sense to even consider the market risk role; some people have told me that I would be foolish not to take up the FO internship role regardless (since I still have the masters option and trading is hard to get into ) but I have doubts. One of my main concerns is that I'm the type of person that very much prefers having time to ponder over my decisions, and hence am not very sure if trading fits that sort of personality. (well I know it differs from desk to desk, and the only information I have at the moment is that I'll be interning at a currencies desk)

My train of thought is that in market risk, I may be able to learn a broader range of skills that may be more applicable to portfolio management/asset management. Also, since this is FT I could break in as an associate faster as opposed to trading internship for a year->trading analyst or trading internship->masters in finance/MFE.

Please kindly let me know if you have thoughts on this

 

[Tom Maloney]

When you say you want to break into asset management, what does that really mean, because there are risk jobs at asset management companies. Maybe not at smaller companies where there are less than say 10 people, but certainly at larger ones. If the risk role at GS gives you exposure to a wide variety of assets, e.g. all the various rates products, FX, equity, commodity, and credit products, that could give you a greater experience than just learning how to make FX markets. You could take the market making job, as a way to become an execution trader at an asset manager, but it doesn't sound you like want that.

 

[myn_gc]

When you say you want to break into asset management, what does that really mean, because there are risk jobs at asset management companies. Maybe not at smaller companies where there are less than say 10 people, but certainly at larger ones. If the risk role at GS gives you exposure to a wide variety of assets, e.g. all the various rates products, FX, equity, commodity, and credit products, that could give you a greater experience than just learning how to make FX markets. You could take the market making job, as a way to become an execution trader at an asset manager, but it doesn't sound you like want that.

Thank you for replying! I'm actually interested in portfolio/fund management that employs investment strategies across a longer time horizon. Joining the investment management divisions of banks or a job at a sovereign wealth fund/asset management firm looking at portfolios would have been closer to where I want to be now, but I didn't discover this interest in this area until my first year of working as a tech analyst.