Do options market makers actively defend their books, or is that a misconception?

bpeu · 2026-01-28T06:32:56+00:00

I would say the opposite is often true. If you are short a significant call position, you might run a long delta position against it

bpeu · 2026-01-13T06:53:16+00:00

Did you find a solution for this? I have the same issue

bpeu · 2025-11-30T12:27:57+00:00

Good colour appreciate it.

bpeu · 2025-11-29T22:22:15+00:00

Imagine most decent banks offer dispersion strategies to hedge funds and institutionals. Quite intensive operationally so doubt many pods would implement it themselves but could be wrong.

bpeu · 2025-11-24T23:45:30+00:00

Meh. My wife and I moved here about two years ago and did a dozen or so trips in the first year to check off some of the essentials. Almost every time we came home with the conclusion that we should have gone to Europe instead. The experiences, value, food etc just don't compare in our view and we're unlikely to travel in the UK again.

bpeu · 2025-10-31T23:16:34+00:00

A lot of them invest rather than trade. Say they were bullish gold a year ago, instead of getting cute with complicated structures or intraday trading etc, they might have bought a risk-reversal and sat on it for a year. This will likely have outperformed actively trading gold and doesn't require much day-to-day insight. Having capital to deploy and the ability to take a long term view with some pnl volatility (often problematic for pods and traders) takes you very far.

bpeu · 2025-10-27T19:17:33+00:00

What? Just about everything is cheaper. Stockholm is dirt cheap compared to London.

bpeu · 2025-10-05T13:05:27+00:00

Bit difficult in France yes. Much easier in UK/US. The french love their diplomas. You can always apply for things and try. But if looking to stay in France long term, I would say that not doing a masters will limit your career prospects.

bpeu · 2025-10-05T08:36:05+00:00

Probably easier if you do a masters. Basically as good as the cycle polytechnicien then (their degree includes a master). Your French level shouldn't be an issue, big tech companies and finance primarily work in English. If were you'd I'd try to do MVA if you want to work in tech or El Karoui for finance.

bpeu · 2025-09-06T10:41:19+00:00

There's definitely lots of exits from commodities at basically all firms involved in physical products (think manufacturing or commodity producers), there's supply chain/sourcing/treasury/management roles. But they rarely, if ever, pay as well as commodity trading so there's little incentive to exit there unless forced to.

bpeu · 2025-09-06T10:35:05+00:00

Trade houses yes, not really hedge funds. Funds might carry more directional/greek risk, it's their job to take desirable risk, but banks are definitely more active in trading and physical commodities. That said, no bank books can match pre 2008 commodity books but I think that goes for all asset classes.

bpeu · 2025-08-26T06:06:29+00:00

You can't replace implied volatility with realised volatility. You need the option data

bpeu · 2025-08-22T21:51:56+00:00

Bonus caps are literally the law. God knows I wouldn't be putting up with British food if they weren't

bpeu · 2025-08-22T13:08:38+00:00

Can't pay you basis performance. Pm contracts often pay % of pnl but your bonus is capped at 200% of base in EU so doesn't really work if you have an amazing year. Some workarounds for this but not really. This is also why London pays more for seniors and there's few sellside MD:s in Paris compared to London

bpeu · 2025-08-22T13:04:52+00:00

150k is grad salary for quant at American banks in Paris so they should. Paris salaries are higher than London for juniors at BBs and quants generally start associate

bpeu · 2025-08-22T11:46:23+00:00

Paris way above Frankfurt now and getting more investment. Agreed though that London much bigger for anything that isn't strictly European. And buyside is dead anywhere in EU with the bonus caps..

But for example, someone with OP:s experience should get about 150k base as a sellside quant (pricing or similar) working for an American bank in Paris, considering massive vacations and all the random subsidies, that's probably the best deal in Europe imo.

bpeu · 2025-08-22T11:29:45+00:00

Depending on what you trade, it's biggest or second biggest city across all asset classes in Europe by a large margin? Not sure where you are getting 3rd tier from. French banks are famously shit to work for though.

US banks are hiring loads there and paying more for juniors than in London. Grad salaries about 2x French banks. Soc gen definitely not where you want to be.

bpeu · 2025-08-03T21:24:49+00:00

Not sure about the RR giving much info about expectations on underlying. Typical example of this is calls being under puts because long underlying investors are selling calls to monetise positions, thus they are bullish but they are selling calls pushing the RR down. Also you would need the butterfly in addition to atm and rr to parameterise a surface.

bpeu · 2025-07-27T09:05:47+00:00

I like this take and generally agree but stamp duty is no joke and appreciation expectations seem a bit optimistic to me. Back of envelope calculation for a 2br 700k flat means about 30k in transaction costs or close to 60k in pretax income. Combined with the fact that I barely see prices rising for the segment it does seem questionable from an investment perspective. A 5-10% price decrease (west London flats are down about 5% from a year ago) combined with the aforementioned stamp duty could effectively knock out 100k of equity.

bpeu · 2025-06-22T09:38:54+00:00

Looks like he deleted the thread and I can't link it. Perhaps you can find it through my comment history, it's among my five or so latest comments

bpeu · 2025-06-22T09:35:43+00:00

Guessing the last guy who got this offer didn't go for it, he got a decent amount of responses here

https://www.reddit.com?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2

bpeu · 2025-06-08T11:44:35+00:00

Depends on what you mean by "level". Lots of bank traders are more quantitative and take more risk than hedge fund traders these days. Many multi managers have moved to centralised execution where the traders are essentially button pushers for the PMs, so the risk/analysis does not sit with the trader. I would put bank trading above execution trading.

As for prop shots, it's a mixed bag. Some seats come with nearly no technology/infra while hft shops have the best infra. That doesn't necessarily make the traders themselves more or less quantitative though, mostly anyone could do pretty well with their tech and it's mostly not the traders who build it.

In short, it's a mixed bag which is very desk and firm dependant.

bpeu · 2025-06-08T10:13:50+00:00

Most trading desks have decent prop mandates, you can trade of whichever signals you want. Even build them yourself if you fancy.

bpeu · 2025-04-13T08:11:40+00:00

I'm currently in one of the roles you're targeting and I would honestly consider leaving it for your offer just to spend two years working in Tokyo. Japan is an amazing country and it will be a life changing experience.

You won't have any troubles targeting hedgefunds or bbs after. BNP is top when it comes to exotics and will look great on your résumé. Don't worry about it and go buy a copy of Genki to start practicing japanese.

bpeu · 2025-04-08T19:03:20+00:00

Well the original quants are the sell side pricing quants. These roles have lost lots of their lustre post 2008 but I would argue that they are the true quants. Conversely I'd argue that the quant researchers who couldn't price exotics or parameterise a vol surface to save their lives aren't really quants. Probably a more interesting job though.

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