Block Trader

Your days revolve around executing large institutional trades — 10,000+ share blocks — without moving the market. The work happens off-exchange or via dark pools, and the skill is finding the other side of a trade quietly, before the street notices the interest. Every basis point of market impact you avoid or create is directly measurable.

You'll work with institutional clients, portfolio managers, other sell-side desks, and your own risk management team. The harder part is the trust dynamic: clients give you large orders because they believe you won't leak information, and one perceived breach of that trust ends the relationship. Managing information barriers while also working the phones to find liquidity requires extreme discipline.

People who thrive here tend to have relationship depth with institutional clients and the judgment to read order flow without being told the full picture. The role rewards discretion, pattern recognition, and the ability to execute under pressure. If you need transparent, fully-structured work, the opacity and information-sensitivity of block trading can feel uncomfortable.