Quantitative Prop Trader Required by Tier One Investment Bank recruitment
My client is one of the World’s leading investment banks. Continued success of their Quantitative Prop trading business has seen the group expand significantly over the last few years with little sign of this growth coming to an end. They are now looking to further increase the group on a global basis (they can accommodate traders in NY, London, Paris, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore or Tokyo). Because they are not an American bank, they are not affected by the Dodd-Frank legislation. They see this as an ideal opportunity for them to acquire talent from competing firms as they offer an environment to continue to prop trade regardless of legislation that has seen many of their competitors shrink and/or abolish their prop business.
The group started out over ten years ago as a systematic, statistical arbitrage desk. Over time they have diversified from mid frequency strategies to incorporate higher frequency systems and they now trade equities and futures on a global basis. They have excellent platforms capable of accommodating latency dependant strategies as well as the capacity to house more capital intensive, longer-term strategies. The team is looking for profitable traders to join the group and develop successful quantitative strategies from microsecond up to two week holding periods. They are primarily interested in equities and futures. The ideal candidate will therefore have experience working on successful systems. As a guideline figure they are interested in strategies that have a Sharpe Ratio of over 2.5, though the SR should go up as holding period drops. They are open to considering candidates who have not been trading a massive book – here the benchmark should be $10m plus as they are in a position to help scale up strategies.
So what makes this an exciting opportunity?
The desk operates diverse strategies, which means that they are less exposed to market risk than competing groups. The team has a reputation for being one of the best groups in their space. The members of the group work together – the environment is collaborative which helps them to maximise profits. Profits are further maximised by their ability to scale strategies up making use of their huge budget. Furthermore their global presence means they can implement strategies across all global markets. They can accommodate their team members at almost any financial centre in the world. The group does not enforce the ridiculous non-competes currently being seen in the market. Finally the lack of turnover within the team attests to the excellent working environment, which is open and collegiate, as well as the fact that they pay their traders very well – it is not a group where the senior management take all the praise and profit.