Equities: currently 422 jobs.The latest job was posted on 17 Feb 19.
Equities
This sector contains all our equities jobs, including jobs for equities analysts, salespeople, traders, and more.
Equity is another word for a company's assets once all its debts have been paid off. Stocks and shares - known also as equities - grant their owners partial ownership over these assets.
Traditionally, equities have been traded on large global stock exchanges such as the London Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Shanghai Stock Exchange or Deutsche Börse. However, an increasing proportion of equities trading is now taking place off-exchanges, in so-called 'dark pools,' where buyers and sellers of equities can trade anonymously and privately in order to avoid influencing the price of stocks with large buy and sell orders.
Various different entities are active in equities recruitment, including major banks, brokerage houses, agency traders, asset management firms and hedge funds.
It is the role of the equities salesperson to liaise with clients - be they rich individuals, pension funds or other institutional investors - and to advise them when to buy and when to sell particular stocks.
Salespeople then liaise with equities traders who execute the trade on behalf of the client. At their most simplistic, traders act as market makers. Market makers are able to quote clients both buy and sell prices for particular stocks (according to a client's preference), whilst making money from the bid-offer spread (the difference between the price they buy the stock at and the price at which they sell it the stock on to the client).
Trading cash or simple equity products now takes place electronically with automated trading systems matching buyers and sellers. Equally, a large proportion of equities trades are now determined by algorithmic trading systems employing mathematical formulae dictating the best investment strategy. Nevertheless, there remains a need for human intervention. For example, when large so-called block trades are being placed, execution traders may be required to break the trades up into smaller and more manageable chunks in order to achieve the best price in the market.
Sales traders are a kind of hybrid between salespeople and traders - they recommend products to clients and then execute the trades resulting from their recommendations.
As well as selling equities themselves, salespeople are needed to sell electronic trading capabilities. Banks, for example, employ individuals to find clients for their direct market access (DMA), or electronic trading systems.
Alongside actual salespeople and traders, jobs in equities can be for IT programmers, quants, and equity researchers who support an organisation's equity sales and trading capability.