Quantcast
Channel: Labour – Forex Signals
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

The state of the financial labour market

0
0

As many risk takers are likely to be concerned with locking down positions and profits into month and quarter end, Macro Man thought he would address an issue that’s near and dear to his heart, the state of the labour market for market professionals.

He spent a few minutes sifting through efinancialcareers, an online job portal that pretty much does what it says on the tin.  First, he looked at openings for portfolio managers:

As you can see, the query generated 290 results, globally.   OK, what about looking for traders?

Hmmm…507 results, but as you can see, a lot of the results are for quant traders because hey, HFT front-running is perfectly legal and what could ever go wrong?  If you sometimes feel like trading these days is like living in The Matrix, you just might be on to something.   A search for C++ yields a whopping 1434 results.

If you apply for one of these roles and are contacted by an “Agent Smith”, watch out!  On a slightly more serious note, perhaps the best piece of advice that Macro Man can give young readers interested in a financial career can be summed up in 3 words.  Learn.  To.  Code.

Even more than coding, however, there is one area of finance that is in a roaring, runaway bull market with no end in sight.  Some may call it a bubble, but as you know the authorities always feel uncomfortable identifying bubbles in real time.   Indeed, listen to Yellen’s Congressional testimony and you can see certain members cheering lustily for the trend to continue, nay accelerate.

Step forward Compliance officers, for whom there are a stunning 3093 vacancies!

There you have it folks, financial markets in 2015- where demand for compliance folk outnumbers that for portfolio managers by more than 10-to-1.  The irony, of course, is that in their zeal against too-big-to-fail on the banking side, the authorities have significantly raised the AUM bar for what constitutes a viable business proposition on the fund side.  As a result, in some sectors at least assets have concentrated in huge funds with the built-in compliance infrastructure to satisfy the rampant bull market.

One can only hope that come the next market crisis, they do not prove to be too big to fail.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images