Contents

⚠️ Read this first. Markets is a narrower, more technical path than most MIM students will pursue. This guide exists for the smaller group who are eligible, interested, or quant-leaning — not as a mainstream track like IB or consulting. If mental math under pressure, real-time risk, and living by a daily P&L don't appeal to you, that is a perfectly good reason to close this page. If they do, read on — the rest of this guide takes the path completely seriously.

💡 What is "Markets"?

"Markets" is the umbrella spanning sell-side Sales & Trading (S&T) — the trading floors of investment banks — and buy-side Hedge Funds (HFs) — investment firms taking risk with client capital. Quant/systematic trading cuts across both: it is a skillset and a style, not a separate venue.

The Trading Floor: Sales, Trading & Structuring

A bank's Markets division splits into three roles that sit metres apart but do very different jobs:

Sales — Owns the client relationship. Distributes the bank's prices and ideas to asset managers, hedge funds, corporates and central banks. Translates trader pricing into client-facing trade ideas.
Trading — Owns the risk. Prices client requests, manages the resulting inventory, and makes markets — continuously quoting prices to buy and sell.
Structuring — Owns the product. Engineers bespoke derivatives and solutions for client problems (hedging FX exposure, yield enhancement). The most technical of the three; sits between sales and trading.

Sales vs. Trading — The First Distinction That Matters

This is the single most common point of confusion for newcomers, so be precise: sales and trading are different jobs with different skills, different days, and different exits.

	Sales	Trading
Core job	Client relationships and distribution	Pricing risk and managing inventory
Who you face	Clients — all day, on the phone and in person	The market — screens, pricing models, other desks
Judged on	Client revenue ("sales credits"), relationships, flow brought in	Desk P&L, risk management, pricing quality
Key skills	Communication, market fluency, commercial instinct	Mental math, composure, probabilistic thinking
Typical exits	Investor relations, capital raising, fintech sales	Hedge funds, prop firms, risk-taking seats

💡 Neither is "junior" to the other. A great salesperson can be a desk's biggest revenue source. But if your goal is a risk-taking seat at a hedge fund, trading is the direct feeder — sales is not.

How the Money Is Actually Made

A flow desk (sell-side) earns money three ways:

Spread capture — Buy at the bid, sell at the offer. Small margins, huge volumes.
Inventory management — Client trades leave the desk holding positions. Skilled traders hedge or work out of that inventory at a profit; unskilled ones bleed.
Client flow — Seeing large, informed flow is itself an informational edge — it helps the desk position its inventory intelligently (within strict conduct rules).

A buy-side desk (hedge fund) earns money one way: being right. Directional or relative-value positions held with conviction until the thesis plays out or is proven wrong. No client flow to cushion a bad view.