2023 Institutional Securities Quantitative Summer Program (New York)

City: New York

Education Level: Bachelor's Degree

Business Unit: Quantitative Finance

Job description: Overview

Strong quantitative talent is the backbone for many businesses at Morgan Stanley. Whether creating customized, complex investment solutions for clients, developing trading strategies using machine learning techniques, or collaborating with AI researchers at our Data Center of Excellence to build state-of-the-art algorithms, the quantitative expertise embodied by our team has separated us from our peers. At Morgan Stanley, we understand that future innovation in the financial markets will be created at the intersection of technology, data and a quantitative approach. Summer Analysts will play a large role in that vision and we encourage students of all technical disciplines to showcase their toolkit and become part of our industry-leading, global franchise.

Each program is an intensive 10-week program that provides Summer Analysts the opportunity to work alongside full-time professionals on impactful, innovative quantitative projects. The multi-faceted programs feature senior teach-in sessions, divisional speaker series, product area training, networking events, and community service. With individual coaching and continuous feedback, the programs enable Summer Analysts to experience and understand what a long-term career with the Firm entails.

The Summer will kick off with a week-long introductory training program, alongside all Sales & Trading Summer Analysts, which will provide an institutional contextualization to the work that Summer Analysts will be doing through market-knowledge training, finance workshops, coding and product training.

Following the training week, Summer Analysts join their assigned Division, and continue to receive more individualized, on-the-job training on their specific desks and begin daily work and projects. Summer Analysts will have a direct manager, as well as a mentor, both of whom will act as invaluable resources to the Analysts throughout their time at Morgan Stanley.

As the approach to risk management and pricing has become increasingly model and data driven, Morgan Stanley requires its incoming trading analysts to not only simply understand, interpret, and build models but also embody an entrepreneurial spirit to create next generation solutions that will drive success in this changing landscape. Trading analysts work with a variety of experts, from seasoned veterans to industry changing innovators in our AI teams, and leverage Morgan Stanley’s vast resources to understand and identify opportunities in the marketplace. Whether your interest be in data analytics, machine learning, modeling, statistics, computer science, or another technical field, we offer roles that will utilize your technical skillset within our expansive, market-leading franchise.

We structure our programs as rotational, which means that you will interact with several teams over the course of your internship. We do this so that you not only understand the different roles within our businesses but also have an opportunity to find a path that best suits your interest. As part of your assessment, you will be given problems derived from actual business challenges that will require you to apply your quantitative toolkit to generate solutions. Examples of past projects: (1) Designing a game-theoretic optimal response strategy for low-latency auctions occurring in the options marketplace, (2) Deconstructing exotic derivatives into their theoretical replication portfolios, backtesting the performance of these portfolios, and analyzing their stability and appropriateness as hedges, and (3) Identifying opportunities and generating trading strategies, ranging from reversion and momentum strategies in equity index volatility to cross-asset relative value.

Structuring:

Structuring is quantitative and entrepreneurial desk that serves as the nerve center connecting the salesforce and the trading team. The Structuring Desk can be bifurcated into two primary responsibilities: OTC Structuring and Structured Notes Trading.

OTC Structuring builds tailored solutions ranging from relative value trade idea generation, derivative portfolio analysis, asset-liability management, and capital optimization. The Structured Notes Trading Desk is a modeling-intensive trading desk that creates, prices, and risk manages bonds with embedded derivatives.

Interns rotate through the Structuring Desk as part of the Sales & Trading program. Through one-on-one discussions with full-time professionals, shadowing actual transactions, and completing comprehensive projects, an intern will learn the fundamentals of interest rate products. Some examples of past summer projects include 1) building and back-testing systematic trading strategies, 2) pitching options-based trade ideas, and 3) analyzing data to draw conclusions on macro relationships and interest rate products.

As markets evolve, Morgan Stanley is increasingly relying on the expertise of quantitative analysts to develop and manage the next generation of automated trading algorithms, pricing models, and risk frameworks. Quantitative analysts play important roles within many divisions at Morgan Stanley, and their responsibilities can be broad. However, strong technical skills, communication, and an entrepreneurial attitude are the pillars of this role.

In contrast to the rotational internships of core sales and trading analysts, quants typically work within a single desk for the entirety of the summer program. You will be tasked with developing and presenting real solutions to business problems for your group. Some examples of past quantitative analyst summer projects include 1) using recurrent neural networks to generate pricing levels for illiquid instruments, 2) building dynamic web tools to help traders and sales interact with relevant information, and 3) using constraint optimizations to help increase signal to noise in trading data.

Bank Resource Management: Bank Resource Management (BRM) is responsible for the Firm’s securities financing transactions, including repo and securities lending trading, OTC derivative counterparty exposures global collateral management. Trading roles within BRM have exposure to Fixed Income and Equity securities and hybrid derivatives across all asset classes the firm is engaged. BRM's centralized framework enables the division to most efficiently provide durable resources to the Firm and its clients, while supporting Morgan Stanley’s strategic efforts to optimize resources and maximize returns.

Fixed Income: The Fixed Income Division (FID) is responsible for structuring and trading securities and derivatives across various credit, macro, and commodities asset classes. We seek to provide unique and inventive solutions to a diverse institutional client base including Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and Pensions & Endowments, amongst others.

Institutional Equity: Morgan Stanley’s Institutional Equity Division (IED) is the world leader in the origination, distribution and trading of equity, equity-linked, and equity-derivative securities. The Division’s traders, quantitative researchers, and salesforce collaborate to deliver innovative products and world-class content that drive differentiated investment ideas and comprehensive solutions for the Firm’s global Institutional clients.

Research: Morgan Stanley’s Research Division is an internationally recognized leader in investment research with a globally integrated platform of analysts, strategists, and economists to help clients generate alpha, in equity and fixed income markets worldwide.

• You have a graduation date of December 2023 or Spring 2024

• You have a minimum GPA of 3.0

• You are pursuing a Bachelor’s degree or an additional one year Master’s program with a technical proficiency in areas such as Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, Financial Engineering, Financial Math, and Engineering or a related quantitative field

• While no prior knowledge of finance or trading is required, you must have a keen interest in finance and markets

• You are familiar with coding languages such as Python, Q, R, SQL, or VBA, C++, Java, Matlab, or Scala

• You have strong verbal and written communication skills

• You enjoy solving complex problems that require deep analytical reasoning and quantitative analysis

• You are collaborative, a quick learner, a team player, adaptable, versatile, a multi-tasker and possess a strong work ethic

Job Level: Summer Analyst

Program: Summer Analyst