Flow Trader

Your days center on executing client orders at a sell-side bank — buying and selling securities to facilitate institutional customer flow, taking principal risk in the process. Most sessions involve managing a book of positions accumulated from customer trades, pricing incoming inquiries, and hedging risk while trying to capture spread.

The workflow blends client service with risk management — you're quoting prices to clients (tighter than the market when you want the flow, wider when you don't), managing the inventory that accumulates from facilitating trades, and deciding when to hold positions for profit versus hedging immediately. Getting the price right matters because institutional clients track your execution quality and will route elsewhere if you're consistently wide.

The key challenge is balancing client service with risk management. You want to facilitate customer flow — it's the business model — but every trade you facilitate creates a position you have to manage. Quoting too tight loses money; quoting too wide loses clients. Finding the right spread for each client and situation is the daily judgment call.