At the age of 20 years old, I felt it was near-impossible to be able to say exactly what I wanted to do for my career. I had ideas, I had studied Economics for the past 2 years and knew I had always been attracted to the financial world, and getting time at any of the world’s large financial institutions became my goal. In the ever-crowded graduate job market, I needed experience of the real world to differentiate myself from my peers and a year’s placement was the obvious solution. The idea of living in a big city at a young age whilst having a little bit of cash in my back pocket was very attractive.

In my placement role I sat on the trading floor at Morgan Stanley with the Equity Financing Team, working from 6:30am until circa 6pm in a trading function, and I provided a wide range of support roles for the desk; running analytics on ways to improve the efficiency of our books, providing colour on the daily flows and managing the operational issues that came with trading the book. In terms of product, the role involved working with the securities lending (stock loan) market, as well as corporate bonds and emerging market Commercial Paper. This consequently allowed me to gain exposure to a number of desks in both the equities and fixed income space, and there was a strong emphasis on personal development and improving market knowledge. The sector provided me with additional training during the year, as well as many organised projects for the placement students groups to be involved with.

The placement has given me an incredible exposure to the market; both within the product traded my desk, but also within the firm as a whole. Morgan Stanley emphasise the need to develop knowledge outside of just the usual routine work, and I have been actively encouraged to spend time with members of other sectors. The team ethos this has created really helps you feel welcome and I honestly have had no issues during my team here.

Although it is long hours, and can be stressful at times, the job is honestly fascinating. I do really enjoy getting stuck into the market and the fact that you see your book changing due to events unfolding in the market before you mean that there is never a dull day. 12 hour days are initially very tiring, with the sheer amount of information streaming into you often hard to keep track of, however there isn’t a day where I am not engaged in interesting tasks and I am a firm believer that it is a lot easier to wake up at 6am when you have a job you enjoy.

I think that beyond the typical work related skills, (writing emails, dealing with tricky clients and hard discussions) the placement also teaches you a lot about organisation and working hard. I certainly feel that in my final year I now understand what it is like to sit and work for long periods, which I hope will be beneficial for revision and essays.

I am of the opinion that comparatively, this is one of the best Sales & Trading placements you can do if you want to fully understand the market, as you are given real work to do, unlike more operations-based placements. Upon reflection, it is quite frightening how much I have learnt over the period, and I would really encourage anyone interested in the markets to apply.