Breaking into Global Markets as a graduate can feel overwhelming because the term covers many very different jobs—each with its own mix of skills, hours, and career paths. Here’s a overview of main departments and roles within GM, their day-to-day, and how to choose a role that fits you.

Picking a desk in Global Markets is one of the most consequential decisions you'll make early in your sales and trading career. Unlike investment banking, where analysts generally rotate through generalist pools before specializing, S&T divisions expect you to land on (or close to) a specific desk from day one.

Global Markets, often encompassing Sales and Trading (S&T) roles in investment banks, includes activities like equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities (FICC), structuring, and research. Compensation in this sector is highly variable, depending on factors such as desk performance (e.g., macro trading vs. equities sales), individual contributions, firm type (bulge bracket vs. European banks), and market conditions.

Quantitative finance, often referred to as "quant finance," is a dynamic field that merges advanced mathematics, statistics, computer science, and financial theory to solve complex problems in the financial markets. It emerged prominently in the 1980s with the development of computational methods for pricing derivatives and has since evolved to encompass data science, machine learning, and algorithmic trading.

In this post I will discuss with you the current and future state of all main global markets roles. The headcount for trading roles has declined steeply since the financial crisis.

For those who are considering a career in sales, I’ve decided to outline what a typical day is like for a junior on a busy sales desk. My first front office role was as a junior salesperson, supporting an EMEA energy sales team covering oil and gas derivatives.

In the 1980s and 90s many people started their careers in banking in the back office and worked themselves up the ladder to eventually become high-profile traders or sales people. However, nowadays it has become increasingly difficult to move up the ranks within an investment bank.

I believe that every skill and profession can be learned by anyone. Nonetheless, some people are more prone to do certain jobs than others. In this post I would like to discuss seven signs that your personality might have that fit good for a trading career.