Risk Management to Sales and Trading, Help!

[DGreen]

Hey guys,

I'm an undergrad studying engineering in University of Toronto, and have just accepted a summer internship offer from a big Canadian bank in its risk management division.

To be honest I took this job primarily to have a better chance of getting into Sales and Trading in my penultimate year (I didn't want to risk rejecting the offer and not ending with anything this summer). I have two more years to go after this summer.

I just want to know if anyone has any idea if I can back my experiences up to break into sales & trading next year since it is extremely competetive especially at RBC, TD, Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch etc. If anyone has any advice or experience in dealing with this, please let me know.

 

[Ken Abbott]

If the people at your firm suspect that you're just using the risk job as a stepping stone, things will not go well for you.

 

[DGreen]

@Ken Abbott Yup I completely agree and I think the internship will be a great experience regardless of which risk desk I'm assigned. But the thing is I still have 2 more years to go due to which this internship doesn't come with a potential full time offer. Infact, the HR said, depending on their needs, they may or may not decide to give me an offer to intern with them next year.

I won't really know about the work that goes down there till I experience it anyways so I won't know if I like it till then.

But if it is actually a stepping stone, do you think it's a good one? I hear how market risk is somewhat relevant to a traders work but I fail to see the transferable skills that I can take from risk to trading.

 

[kamikade]

Yeah I was about to say what Ken said. Bay Street is very small, if someone reads this and wants to find out who you are, they will find out in 5 mins. You do not want to show up first day at work and get mocked by people. To be honest, I automatically do not like you if you happen to be my colleague.

Be happy because you have a job this summer, how many people in your program have not found a summer position? There are thousands qualified students from UofT, Waterloo, McMaster, McGill, UBC, and Western compete for these positions. So, appreciate the opportunity, work hard, show your work ethic, and learn as much as you can. While working there, network with people in S&T and ask for opportunities to learn more about S&T. And do not set your mind that you have to go into S&T! There are more interesting areas in finance besides S&T.

 

[DGreen]

@kamikade Thanks for being honest; and yeah not a lot of eng-sci kids get such finance internships, which I'm grateful for. The only reason I'm in this conundrum is I've never done anything with financial risk before. Sure, i know how to regress and code in c++ but I've never quite targeted it towards anything except for classroom securitization which i quite enjoy.

If you happen to work in market risk, are any of my skills applicable (as an intern)? Or what would I be required do as an intern?

 

[daleholborow]

Could be just me, but my impression of sales and trading, are of two quite different beasts?

 

[DGreen]

Could be just me, but my impression of sales and trading, are of two quite different beasts?

@daleholborow do you mean that sales and trading are 2 different things? If yes, then I agree. But a lot of people tell me that the lines have blurred quite a bit depending on your product and they do a lot of both so I just put them together in this thread.

If that's not what you meant. could you elaborate?

 

[kamikade]

Sorry I do not work specifically in risk department, so I cannot tell you what you will be required as an intern. However, I came across some informative risk management threads on this forum so you can look them up and start from here. Another way is go on Linkedin, find alumni/students in your program who has experience in risk management and ask them what should you prepare in order to do well this summer (do not say that you has never targeted a career in risk management or you just want to use this job as a stepping stone. Just simply tell them this is the first time you work in risk management and you would like to prepare for the summer. Ask them for advice what technical skills you should know, what you should read to prepare, etc.)

Risk management is a very useful skill and knowledge to have in any finance areas. So skill sets that you develop this summer will be transferable to other areas of finance. One of them is understanding the context. I am sure in order to survive in your program and get a summer job, your technical skills must be good. However, you properly do not know much about the risk context (ie: what are risks, why do we have risks and how do we model and manage them, etc.) so this is a good opportunity for you to learn. I read "Risk Management and Financial Institutions" by John Hull before. I did not know much about risk management (or what sort of risks are there) and I learned a lot from the book.