I am really grateful for the time everyone gave me on the desk. I went in knowing very little about rates beyond the theory, and came out having generated my own trade ideas and run PCA on the curve to test them. Having people around who explained why each piece actually mattered made all the difference. It is the reason rates trading is now the career I want to build.
Suleiman joined with no route onto a trading floor. We placed him for a week on the rates trading desk at Schonfeld, where he ran the full arc of a real research process: generating his own trade ideas, then testing them with principal component analysis on the curve. That is desk level work, and it is now the first thing a recruiter sees on his CV.
From MIT to the quant seat
Andres is at MIT and interviewing for a quant research role in October. Quant research is one of the hardest processes to prepare for cold: probability and statistics under pressure, live coding, and research judgement all in the same loop. He is working through it with the community behind him.
Two more placements this month
Two further work experience placements are confirmed for August, with details to follow once they start. The programme is growing faster than we expected, which is the whole point.
Your story next?
Placements go to people already in the community. It starts with joining, then showing up to the clinics.
Join the community →Placed somewhere through Desk Ready? Tell us about it and we will feature you here.