Sales and trading

You spend a summer on the trading floor, helping the desks that buy and sell currencies, bonds and shares for investors. The seat is a summer analyst in Markets at Wells Fargo in London, a 10 week placement for students in their penultimate year. Markets is the part of a bank that trades with investors and helps them manage risk, which means protecting themselves against moves in interest rates, currencies or prices. Salespeople own the relationship with each investor client and bring in their orders. Traders quote a price, fill the order and manage whatever the bank is left holding afterwards.

The desks in London are FX & Rates Sales and Trading, which deals in currencies and interest rates, Credit Sales and Trading, which deals in bonds issued by companies, Structured Product Groups, which build tailored products out of simpler ones, Asset-Backed Securities, which are bonds backed by pools of loans such as mortgages, and Equities, which is shares. There is also Macro Strategy, which studies economies and markets to form the views the desks use. You work alongside one or more of these teams.