The Ultimate Guide to Sales and Trading

Trading and Sales

Sales and Trading a group within an investment bank, consists of salespeople who call institutional investors to discuss opportunities and traders who execute orders and provide advice on how clients can enter and exit financial positions. Investment securities firms can be made or broken by sales and trading, whether they are stock brokerages, hedge funds, or investment banks.

Sales Activities

One of the main activities in Sales and Trading is investment sales. An investment firm’s salespeople provide information to potential investors about securities. An investment bank’s potential clients are typically large institutional investors. However, a stock brokerage or a hedge fund may have primarily retail investors.

Trading Activities

Traders are part of both sales and trading activities. They buy and sell securities on behalf of clients or for their investment firm. Several traders are employed by investment firms that specialize in different areas, such as stocks, bonds, and commodities. The depth of specialization in sales or trading is often more significant than the individual traders. The latter is assigned to trade only one market, such as the gold market, or a particular market sector, like transportation or health care.

ListTrader trading

ListTrader allows wholesale traders to exchange “needslists,” pricelists and finalize bids within a short time. It acts as a central repository for wholesale demand worldwide. It instantly matches wholesale demand and available supply in any geographic area. List Trader makes it easy to sell inventory quickly and profitably through our Trusted Buyer Network. Find a match soon for your products using List Trader. No prior contacts are required to help new traders get into the trade.

Structure

People are not equipped to guide clients with complex products. Structures are the solution. The structure team can develop expertise in complex products. They can then present their knowledge to clients through the salespeople who deal with the more general day-to-day relationships. When it is time to execute trades, they work directly with traders.

Research

Research is designed to give traders, investors, and salespeople insights into potential trade and investment ideas. Credit research focuses more on a fixed income, while equity research primarily focuses on equities.

Products in Sales & Trading

Traders do not trade all types of products. They specialize. In particular, banks will divide Equities, FICC (Fixed income Currencies), and Commodities.

Equities

It refers to trading stock. More precisely, equity is divided between:

Cash Equities: Trading ordinary stock shares

Equity derivatives Trading derivatives for equities (stock options and equity indices)

Fixed Income

Refers to bonds and is often further divided in the following manner:

Interest Rate Derivatives and Government Bonds

Corporate Bonds High Grade, High Yield Loans, Credit Derivatives

Securitized Products: Mortgage Backed Securities, Asset-Backed Securities

Municipals: Tax-exempt bonds (State, Municipality, Non-Profit)

Currencies have also known as FX. Commodities round out FICC.