My second year in Banking

Gosh... I haven't been writing on my blog for almost a year now! This tells you how busy I am! I am still working in Investment Bank in Fixed Income Division and I enjoy it :). I was thinking that in this post I will tell you how my typical day looks like.

I wake up at 5.50 on every weekday. I live relatively close to the office - I commute on Docklands Light Railway. During my trip on DLR I review emails on my Blackberry - I check also the most recent analysts' reports. I am in the office at 6:45. First, I start with the review of the overnight risks of my trading book. Every night all the exotics and vanilla positions in my book are repriced, so I can see what are the risks first thing in the morning. I see current deltas, gammas, vegas etc. of each of my position in the trading book. If there are significant unhedged positions I put orders to neutralize them.
At around 7.30 we have a floor meeting on which all analysts provide their insight about the current situation in the market. They provide advice where we can expect to see flows in the markets and what are the key drivers of the market in a given day.
At 7:50 I am back into my desk and I review all incoming client orders (first I deal with Asian clients as their day is coming to an end, so I want to provide the with the indicative pricings). If I have any firm orders from the client I execute these orders and hedge resulting risk in the market. In the mean-time I am checking if my book prices correctly (if there are any problems with the book - I ask our excellent MO team to review the instruments that did not price). During the day I am also pricing complex trades that require additional analysis - I check if the models that we have are suitable for these complex trades.
At 12:30 I grab a lunch in a nearby restaurant and I am back on the desk after 5-10 minutes. At 13:30 - I have a risk meeting where I discuss with the head of the desk and the risk officer the risk exposure of my trading book. I need to explain why I hedge particular things in a particular way - for example why I hedged vega with short term options rather than with long term ones etc.
At 17.30 I have to "save the book" (I need to sign-off the end of day risk and end of day P&L). This usually involves some heavy interactions with MO - they are recalculating values of all positions for the end of day. After 19:00 till around 22:00 - when the trading floor becomes quiter I have a chance about RV strategies that we could try implement ourselves or we can recommend to our best clients. I am back at home at around 22.30.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Results of 14th Survey

It seems you are not very optimistic about the prospects of the industry. Big portion of you expects that banks will be not hiring this year. I wouldn't be so pessimistic - when I look around I see that there is big number of interviews happening - people are getting and changing jobs. The biggest number of opportunities are now on the corporate side.