Difference between trading and investment banking?

monydad
Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:53:13 +0000

FWIW, I’ve worked on or near trading floors in four different companies and I can assure you that, in these firms, traders do not code. They trade. They may specify things to be coded to quants or analysts who support them, but they do not sit there coding themselves. Coding can be very time-consuming and they don’t have time for that. Most traders don’t know how to code, either. It is not in their job description, and they don’t need to be able to do it at all.

They do, however, know how to specify things to be coded. And they know how to interpret the information that results from the coding, and use it as they deem appropriate in their trading activity.

There are some particularly “quant” subareas that may be exceptions to this to an extent. But even in these areas, mostly I’ve seen the traders spec out coding tasks to quants or support analysts. Because, though these particular traders could in fact do it themselves, they don’t have time to do this and trade at the same time.

One person can only do so much.

They might make routine spreadsheets themselves to help with certain tasks. But once these get too time consuming or complex they are delegated.