Switching Asset Classes

[financeguy]

Does anyone have any experience with this? Just from my own experience, I haven't met any concrete example of someone who has traded more than one asset class on the sell side. For example, how can someone who has been trading equity derivatives at a bank for a few years go about getting a job in trading interest rate derivatives at a bank? To be clear, I am not trying to go about doing this at the moment and the above isn't my profile, so further questions as to my personal background and goals are irrelevant. Just asking the question generally.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

The reason you "haven't met any concrete example" is that there are very few?
I only see people who move from place to place doing the same or very similar stuff and once his stuff is no longer fashionable/profitable, he becomes redundant.
My take is that if a single asset class is becoming more "vanilla" (equity derv can be argued to belong here), one has to reinvent himself long before he finds the daily task too mundane and routine before getting a chance in other asset class. And once he spends too long in one class, there is a risk of getting label an "equity guy".
I've seen guys getting restless and start going to conference, reading books, talking to people to pave his way. The process is a few years before the jump. And more often than not, in the new domain, the guy takes a lower position in the totem.

 

[financeguy]

The reason you "haven't met any concrete example" is that there are very few?
I only see people who move from place to place doing the same or very similar stuff and once his stuff is no longer fashionable/profitable, he becomes redundant.
My take is that if a single asset class is becoming more "vanilla" (equity derv can be argued to belong here), one has to reinvent himself long before he finds the daily task too mundane and routine before getting a chance in other asset class. And once he spends too long in one class, there is a risk of getting label an "equity guy".
I've seen guys getting restless and start going to conference, reading books, talking to people to pave his way. The process is a few years before the jump. And more often than not, in the new domain, the guy takes a lower position in the totem.

Yes, the reason I haven't met any concrete example is I think it's because there are very few, or that I've met an extremely perverse subsection of the trading population (doubtful).
Yeah it's all a bit concerning really. After my summer internship way back when I scored a coveted meeting with the then head of Americas sales and trading on the floor of that bank. I told him of my plans to join another bank trading xyz and asked for his general advice - I was very sneakily asking for a free option to rejoin his bank some years later to trade xyz or abc or whatever. Naturally this free option was not granted, but he advised me that if I wanted to switch out of trading xyz, I could only do xyz for 2-5 years - otherwise I was as Andy has said, an xyz guy. Now that I have been doing xyz for somewhere within that 2-5 year range, it really seems like 5 is maybe too generous an upper bound. I've tried to apply to abc and def trading jobs through headhunters that post listings online, and some I've talked to who said they'd mention me to the client, but none accepted me for an interview. Interviews for xyz have been easy to come by, however. Obviously xyz is very different from abc and def and I'd understand that they'd probably prefer someone who has 2-5 years of abc experience for the abc job, but there are some commonalities - like knowing the greeks inside and out, having traded some of the spot instruments to hedge xyz's exposures to them, having some sort of product expertise - that sort of stuff. Also what I trade is not becoming vanilla, it's very non-vanilla, and the industry isn't going away. I'm good at what I do as well and could keep doing it, I'm just curious about how other desks make money and think maybe it would be good for me to spend a couple years on an abc desk since it's uncanny how much you can learn about what you specifically do and not have a clue what they do two rows down! Anyway the point is I've found that it's enormously difficult to cross the asset class barrier even at my level. And then if I get too senior, it's out of the question forever. So who's got some sort of beacon of hope / instruction manual?