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Traders are responsible for making prices and executing trades in equities, bonds, commodities and foreign exchange, usually dealing on behalf of or for the benefit of investment banks.

Traders generally fall into one of the following categories:

• flow traders – buy and sell financial products on behalf of their bank’s clients

• propriety traders – trade on behalf of the bank itself

• sales traders – take instructions from the client and act as intermediaries between the client and the people who execute the trades (flow and propriety traders).

Responsibilities differ slightly between the three types of trader. Flow and propriety traders’ tasks include:

• collating relevant information and data

• liaising closely with sales staff and inter-dealer brokers

• determining market sentiment via research, valuation and data analysis

• monitoring UK and international market performance

• making prices in specific products

• providing key parties with daily trading information

• informing sales staff about market movements/prices

• executing trades

• gaining information from sales staff about client issues.

Sales traders focus more heavily on client relationships, so they also secure deals with new clients, present ideas to clients and develop these relationships.

Trading offers high levels of responsibility, good promotional opportunities and impressive financial rewards including generous salaries and large bonuses. Sales staff are commonly known as traders, although there are differences between the two roles, notably that sales staff travel more and spend more time concentrating on client relationships.

Qualifications and training required

You’ll need to be a graduate to enter this career.

Key skills for traders

• Confidence

• Numerical skills

• IT skills

• Communication skills

• An interest in financial markets

• Analytical skills

• Interpersonal skills

• Teamworking skills.

Typical employers of traders

• Financial houses

• Investment banks

• Exchanges such as ICE Futures Europe

• Treasury departments of major companies