From the University of Birmingham to a Hedge Fund Trader

Okay, hi Matt, absolutely great to have you on. I know we haven't spoken in some time, but I do remember you very fondly from many years ago. I think I had to look, it was 2017 that you, uh, definitely, uh, did the program. Um, but yeah, yeah, I saw you came to mind because I saw it pop up on LinkedIn that you've, you've just secured a new role. And I know you've had a few since when you graduated from the University of Birmingham. So I thought you could just tell us a little bit about what you're doing now and where are you. I can see it looks a little bit warmer where you are than where I am at the moment. So, so what's going on?

Sure. So yes, I'm currently living in Monaco, working at a hedge fund here. So I'm an execution trader. So as you rightly said, when we first met, I was at the University of Birmingham. I was an undergrad in economics, and then I did the Amplify summer program at the end of my first or second year. Actually slips my mind which, I think second year. And then following kind of going back to uni and completing my degree, I then started on the grad scheme at Credit Suisse where I was on the electronic trading desk, and then I spent 3 years there. Um, I think it was a year and a half in cash equities and then a year and a half in listed derivatives. And then I moved to Berenberg, uh, while I was on the high-touch, um, cash sales trading desk. Um, I spent just over a year there, and yeah, now I'm a trader at Edge Fund in Monaco. Wow.

And there's a couple of terminology points there. You said high-touch and you said electronic trading. So maybe going in the order of reverse chronological order, so electronic trading at Credit Suisse, like, what is that?

Sure, yeah. So, um, electronic trading or low-touch trading, um, it's effectively trading through algorithms. Um, the reason why it's called low-touch is, you know, it does what it says on the tin. Um, the idea is that the client and also the bank/broker, um, want to get involved with the order as little as possible. It's supposed to be straight-through process, seamless, and you can kind of give an order to the bank through one of these algos and it will intelligently work it in the best way to, well, in a way to get the best execution. So, you know, it will have tried to have as little impact as possible and not alert the market. But that's kind of very generalized. There's many different algos that you can use and types of low-touch trading, but it's effectively kind of giving the keys more to the buy-side trader, and they can kind of have more autonomy and control of their order. Whereas high-touch trading, again, does what it says on the tin. It's very much kind of more personal, and you'll have a sales trader who you will speak to, and you will physically give him or her the order. And again, it can work many different ways, but the general high-level principle is that high-touch trading, you'll have a lot more interaction with your counterpart on the sell side, low touch, it kind of gives you more control and you have less interaction, uh, with your broker.

So in a low-touch environment where it's more algorithmic-led, is there— to work in that area, is this where it's all people who come from a mathematical background, programming background, or is there a blend of different people within these teams?

Yeah, it's absolutely a blend. So for example, you know, I did Economics University, which obviously is geared towards mathematics to some degree, but it's certainly not a STEM subject. And within the many different electronic trading desks that I've seen across the city, you do have that mix, and it really can vary massively. The way that electronic trading desks are generally split out is that you'll have kind of a sales, sales trader function And then you'll have a quant and development side of the business as well. And obviously they all work seamlessly, hopefully, together. But the quant and the development side of the team are naturally extremely kind of more technical and are engineers and computer scientists. And they build the product, they build the algorithms, they backtest the algorithms and look at data all the time to see, you know, how they can improve the functionality of the algos. Whereas the sales/trader function, obviously you need to be able to understand kind of these technical principles, but you certainly don't need to have an in-depth STEM background. I know people who studied history and the arts who were working on electronic trading desk. So yeah.

So going back to, when you were graduating. So when you were first doing applications and things like that, did you have it in mind that it was trading you wanted to go into? And then how did like the Amplify experience fit within that process?

Yeah, sure. Um, I mean, Amplify experience was definitely instrumental. Um, I, I did have in my mind that I wanted to go into trading, um, but obviously when you're applying for internships and grad students it's often branded all as one Global Markets internship. Um, so within that, it's not necessarily going to be trading. Um, it could be sales, it could be structuring, it could be, uh, research sometimes. Um, so I knew that I wanted to do some more geared towards trading, but there wasn't really an option to directly apply to, you know, get experience on a trading desk. And then at the time, um, my housemate had done the Amplify seminar when you guys came to Birmingham, um, mentioned to me, he was like, you should definitely check out this summer program. Um, so I did. I thought, wow, that looks great. Um, so came to do that, and then kind of from there, it was, it was definitely the building block which I was able to then apply to grad schemes and further jobs on. Um, and I think what's so instrumental about what you guys do on that program is, is real-world experience. And you, you go away from that program able to continue your growth and journey, um, on your own. That's what I did. Um, I actually remember you telling me, uh, well, telling the class how, um, you know, you recommend even if you're just paper trading, keep kind of just a blog and a diary of exactly what you do, what your reasons are to enter a trade, what your stop level, like what your take profit level is going to be, what you're looking at, what the peers doing, etc., etc., etc. So that was something which I— well, so I cut forward a bit there, but after I finished the program, I was like, okay, this is definitely what I want to do for a career. And all the real-world experience— and when I say real-world experience, I mean actual trading experience in live markets. All that experience then allowed me to take that base layer away and just continually build on it when I was back at uni. Obviously, jumping straight into learning to trade is extremely difficult because it's such an alien world and there's— sorry, can you hear that in the background?

No, no, all good.

Yeah, so jumping into trading is extremely hard because it's such an alien world. They're kind of quite tricky terminology and also just the barriers to entry are extremely high. So it's hard to just jump in and get an understanding. Of course, there are sources of information out there, but also on the other side, there's so many sources and some of them aren't necessarily reliable, so you don't really know where to start. And Amplify really does provide that succinct package of expert knowledge which allows you to understand what is going on in the market. Um, so like I said, after I left Amplify, I was like, okay, it's definitely what I want to do. So then I just continued to kind of trade my own book. Um, and you know, when you say that to people, people can say, yeah, but like, we're students, we don't have money to waste or potentially lose. Well, not potentially, you are going to lose money at the start. But, um, but you don't need to have a live account, you know, you can have a paper account. Of course, you know, I would recommend having a live account because it makes it more real. But also, you don't have to have a large account at all. You start with like 50 quid or something, and, you know, like, I don't want to sound, you know, out of touch to anybody at all, but most people as students can find 50 quid somewhere. Um, so if you, if you really want to kind of start and get going, and, you know, that's what you have to do. And to cut a long story short, that really was kind of the springboard to my career. That's why I left Amplify, and it gave me the initial knowledge to kind of go and trade myself. That meant that I just had a constant understanding of what was going on in the markets because I was trading every day whilst I was at uni. So then when I went to interviews, um, I had an appreciation for what was going on. And, um, that's extremely important when you're applying because, as I said a minute ago, it doesn't matter if you make or lose money What kind of recruiters want to see is that you actually have an interest and you have a sustainable interest. And I personally think the only way to really stand out amongst thousands of applicants these days, if you're applying for bulge bracket bank role, um, is to show that you're, you're kind of a self-starter and you've done something to really show that you're passionate and you want to succeed. You know, it's very easy to— even if you have a 'Stellar spring week or internship experience at a ball-tracked bank,' you know, like, that doesn't actually show that, you know, you're necessarily going above and beyond. Yeah, you'd be great to get onto that, but were you just a seat warmer in that situation? Like, were you really engaged? And the only way to really show that on your CV and to potential employers is to show what you've done off your own back. So like I said, after I left you guys, I kind of illustrated my own book and then keeping just, um, a completely personal blog. It was almost just a blotter, really, not even a blog, of the trades. And then from that, I actually started to build it out to more of a blog. So if, you know, I was thinking about a trade or I'd put on a trade for a specific reason or in a specific sector, then I would just kind of write a bit of a blurb about what I thought was the reason, motivation for that trade. Um, and then I just literally started sharing that on Facebook to my friends, to which none of them even cared slightly, which is what I expected. But it was kind of just— I was like, okay, well, it's just a good exercise for me. Um, and after doing that, I then actually, um, started writing for this kind of online financial media startup called The Market Mogul. They don't actually— but I was doing that. So then kind of, it was just as anything in life, an incremental building block process. So I went from really just keeping a trade blotter to then kind of writing a bit of a blog, to then kind of writing these articles for this online financial media company. Because obviously, you know, I just got more proficient and more involved. And understood the market more, had more to say. So then even just those kind of 3 things I've just described, then when I went to interviews, I just had all of this kind of experience to talk about. And it wasn't conventional experience. It was experience which you don't need to have any connections or foot in the door or money to do. Like, you can just do that yourself. Yeah, yeah.

And your background then, I mean, where is your hometown? Where are you from? Where are you from? There's a slight regional accent there I'm sensing.

It's a tricky accent because I'm originally from South Wales, right on the border of Bristol. So it's that beautiful combination of a Welsh and West Country accent, which many people aspire to. Wow.

How many South Wales border Bristol people are there in Monaco? So having worked, so, you know, you graduated now 4 or 5 years ago. Now looking back in retrospect to, you know, the people who will be listening to this, a lot of them are still in that undergrad phase. There's a lot of uncertainty. Obviously we're going into an economic downturn, a recession, and there's job cuts. And, you know, this seems to be never a good time to enter the workforce. But looking back now, that you've now taken a couple of steps down the path, you've worked at a few different places, what kind of like words of advice could you pass on to those people other than like on the practical stuff that you've shared, just from a kind of motivational or the cultural aspects of the different places where you've worked or locations? Yeah, and so on.

Yes, it's a super important question, um, and obviously aside from what I've already said I think, you know, obviously at risk of just sounding like this is a generic answer, and I will delve deeper into it to kind of justify it, but networking is obviously just so important. And the reason why networking is so important is not necessarily, you know, like I've been super involved with the graduate recruitment process when I was at Credit Suisse and when I was at Barrowman, kind of like to the point of literally meet and greets to bring, you know, potential Spring Week interns all the way through to actually trainee interns and graduates who have actually secured the job. And, you know, what I kind of always tell them is that, and what I always see, is when you go to one of these events, you'll just get hundreds of LinkedIn requests afterwards, and that's it. And people think, oh great, yeah, I networked, cool. But that's not really what it's about. It's the whole point of networking is to get a sponsor, right? And And that's what everybody needs. Like everybody, every young person needs a sponsor. Even people who are more mature in their career need a sponsor. And without the sponsors that I have had, I would no way have gone to where I am now, like without a shadow of a doubt. And the way you kind of meet a sponsor, obviously initially through networking, et cetera, but it's to just interact them on a human level. So anybody who's gonna sponsor you wants, You want really to know that, you know, what your true character is. So just really getting to know people on a human level, whether that's, you know, going for drinks with somebody or going for coffee or literally just having a standard chit-chat with them at the water cooler. Like, that's really what you have to do and that's really important in your career. Because ultimately at the end of the day, if you're working 12 hours in the immediate vicinity of somebody, then you need to be able to get on with them. Yeah, and the more you get on with them, the more successful you're going to be. And like I said, sponsors that I've had in my career have 100% allowed me to move on to the next step every single time. When I left Credit Suisse to go to Barenberg, I wanted, um, to go to work on a high-touch desk, and my boss at the time, who I'm still extremely close with, she gave me that platform, um, and kind of gave me an understanding of all the options that I had, and it allowed me to do that. And then the same thing when I left Barenbrook, um, people kind of knew that I was destined to work on the buy side instead of the sell side, and I was supported to do that. Um, and you know, if you don't have the sponsors to do that, then it just makes it extremely difficult. Um, so that's definitely a salient bit of advice which I would just say is so, so key. Um, and And then the other thing, which again I would always kind of tell undergrads, is that you just have to really be sure that this is exactly what you want to do. It's absolutely fine to not be sure and do a spring week or do an internship and say, ah, okay, fine, it's not for me. But I've seen plenty of people who do a spring week and do an internship and then get a graduate job offer and they take it and you can tell it's not for them and they kind of know it's not for them. But they stick at it, they persist, and it just doesn't work. Because ultimately, this is an industry where if you don't actually enjoy what you're doing, then it's almost impossible to do this job because it's extremely intense. The hours are long, like, like the hours are extremely long, you know. That's just in trading. If you're working on the investment side, then it's all, it's all, it's all, all your life is like at the start, at least anyway. So you definitely have to be sure this is what you want to do. And this comes back to my first point of kind of being a self-starter whilst you're at uni and getting as much experience as you can, just through whether that be something as rudimentary as reading the FT or kind of reading Bloomberg's news articles or like, well, look at Twitter these days, right? FinTwit, actually just such a huge source of news now, which the professional community use as much as the retail community. Obviously that's partly driven by the fact that the retail community is now so inherently linked to the professional community, but everything is on Twitter. Like, research reports are gonna be on Twitter, kind of outlook pieces are gonna be on Twitter from big banks, everything is on Twitter. So, you know, you can just get stuck in there for absolutely free and then that will tell you whether you are interested in the industry or not by just actually having a look.

Yeah, no, it's, it's great. It's great to hear because I think, yeah, testament to you for having that kind of curiosity to just persevere without having that kind of— I think people often have this false pretense that you have to come through this very traditional path to have success, to land the role, and then have success to grow within those roles. But it's not always the case, right? You can hustle to a certain degree.

And, um, I mean, it's a very good point. And kind of when, when I first— I kind of think of my career in London in, in two parts because that's what it was, in two parts. And, um, but I think, I think it's like this for everybody, um, when you work in, um, May Wharf versus working in the City, it's, it's an extremely different environment, um, and I say this, but it's probably not a completely apples-to-apples comparison, because obviously I was on the grad scheme when I was in Canary Wharf and the early stages of my career, and then a bit later on when I moved to the City. But when you join a big bank grad scheme, a lot of people have come through that traditional path. And, you know, bulge bracket banks, I think there's 8 or something, right? So like, they're a very small part of the universe, but naturally they have the biggest marketing budgets, they have the biggest campus recruitment budget, so that's what everybody's kind of drawn for. So on the grand schemes there, the paths are quite linear, um, and they are almost carbon copies of everybody else's path, even though, to be fair, the banks are definitely trying to improve this now and, you know, reaching out to non-target unis and doing more on that side to get a more diverse pool of graduates in. But my point is, is that when I left Canary Wharf and I started working in the city, you realize how many opportunities have come about through the exact means that you've just said, through just hustling and working hard and, you know, finding someone who might be a sponsor for you. And I, I actually know many people who literally got trading jobs because they reached out to somebody on LinkedIn and said, can I just have a chat? Um, and then, you know, people assume that it's so hard to break into this industry, but a lot of the time Tech techs will be looking for juniors and it's hard to find them sometimes. So it's never gonna hurt you to just reach out to somebody and say, can we have a chat? Because even if that chat leads to nothing, in 6 months' time they might suddenly need a junior and they're naturally gonna think, oh, I met that person. Yeah, they seem pretty bright, pretty keen. I'll tell them that we've got a role now. Yeah.

It's like creating your own luck in a way.

And it's like, there's a saying, and I'm definitely not going to quote it correctly now, but it's something along the lines of creating your own luck is really just, you know, working, working, working, working, working, and then you end up being in the right place at the right time. And all that work that you've done prior suddenly pays off, but you just need to wait for it to come. And there's no such thing as just straight luck. You always influence the luck that you're going to get. Yeah, yeah.

All right, for final questions, just to wrap up, is that I know maybe a few people watching this might think, so doing the role that you do, and as you've explained, what would be the skill set that you have so that if they were to simulate a similar path, what do they need to focus on?

Yeah, um, so I would actually say that my number one kind of most necessary skill is just being able to read, um, and I I know from other traders. Um, and when I say other traders, I don't even mean execution traders, I mean alpha-generating traders. Um, like many people quote that, um, because ultimately this game is just a game of knowledge, right? You have to know more than somebody else to— you need to know more than the other person who's on the other side of your trade effectively if you want to win in that trade. And the only way you kind of assimilate that knowledge is through reading. Um, and that can be you know, immediate news like a red headline on Bloomberg, an article, or a research report from a bank, or anything on Twitter, or a short seller report, or anything. But that's the key point. There's value to be found in so many different sources of news these days that you need to quickly be able to run through something and run a comprehension on it and digest that and have an opinion on that. And it's just so important. And the more you read, and the more news sources you can see, then the more likely you are to be successful. And also, you know, like I just said a minute ago, it's not even just the immediacy of reading something and acting on it. It's about just understanding the whole network of the market and the contextual nuances of the market. And again, you only learn that from reading about them, whether, you know, it's obviously people comparing the situation in the market today and the inflation scenario to what happened in the '70s. And there's great value to just looking back at financial and economic history and seeing how that played out and seeing how the Fed reacted and seeing, you know, how the Fed might have done this better or done this wrong. And when they did this wrong, this happened. And, you know, history doesn't repeat, but it often does rhyme. Um, and you've seen myriad graphs in the last kind of year of people comparing the market today to 2001 and 2002, and, you know, there are big similarities to be seen. So it's just having that constant awareness of what's going on, what's going on, what's, what's happened before, what's going on now, then hopefully infer and come out what's going to happen in the future. So reading is definitely kind of my number one tip. And then number two is kind of more of a soft skill, but, and I saw that Ray Dalio actually said this, but to be a good trader, you have to be resilient because you're gonna get hurt. You're gonna get cut up pretty bad, uh, a lot, um, before it starts getting better. And, you know, as with many things in the market, people always end up selling at the bottom. So, you know, when you're in the darkest hour and you think, oh, this just isn't for me, I cannot get this right, you just have through that and have that resilience. Um, and that's what—

that was that resilience. Did you have that resilience already? Because I know you used to play a lot of sport when you were younger. So is that from that, or can you learn resilience?

No, you can definitely learn resilience. But again, I, I'm personally of the opinion that you can learn anything, um, if you kind of have just the right dedication and, and work ethic. And this brings me back to my point of what I said earlier. You have to actually want to do this and you have to actually enjoy this because if you don't, then it's super hard to be resilient because you're like, oh, I don't even really enjoy that this much. So what's the point? Whereas if you know for certain that this is what you want to do and you're absolutely sure of that, then it's almost like you don't have another choice. Like it doesn't matter how bad it gets, how much money you might lose or how stupid you feel because of the decision you've made. You're like, well, there are no other options. This is exactly what I want to do with my life, so I just have to get up and go again. Um, cool.

Well, look, we'll wrap it up there. It's been a pleasure to, uh, catch up with you. It's amazing to see the success you, you continue to have, and I know there's many more turns in the road, I'm sure, to come. But thank you very much for taking the time out to speak to people who were exactly like you were a few years back. So it's so valuable, I think, for them to see, you know, success in, in different ways. So thank you, Matt.

Thank you.

All right.