Hi Guys,So, I've been offered a wonderful opportunity: work placement in Portfolio Trading division (can't disclose the name of company, sorry ).I'm really excited about it but I want to ensure that I go in there knowing the neccessary stuff one would expect from a candidate that has an MSc in Financial Engineering. Any ideas of the important stuff I would need to know from my masters? Thank You!

Read the WSJ everyday like you were interested. what are you trading and who are the ultimate clients?

The technical knowledge will be useful to you later. In the beginning just show up to work on time, pay careful attention to what is going on trying to learn as much as possible (Alan's suggestion is also not bad) and, try not to make any stupid mistakes. You'll do fine.

QuoteOriginally posted by: AlanRead the WSJ everyday like you were interested. I would have to disagree. The FT is a far superior paper, both in general and (more importantly in this context) with respect to coverage of finance and economics.

Portfolio Trading means that you want to minimize the implementation shortfalls for a given risk. Normally you need to know when to use a limit order or a market order.You need to understand what is market data? If you see trades on the market what was the side that was hit?What does it mean that you want to earn the spread. You need to take into account wheter the size you want to trade is a big/small size.How much market impact you will add to the market. How do you want to measure it. You can implement as an exercise a strategy that tries to beat the vwap. Try to backtest it and calculate all the performance numbers.HTHKim

Hi Guys,Thank you to all that has so far replied. I think i need to make it clear that when I mean Portfolio Trading, I mean that I'll be placed in the Portfolio Trading Strategies team and will be sitting with a couple of quant guys.I have no previous experience and hence, need your advice on how to best prepare.Regards,m

You mean like algorithmic trading? It's about how to time the placing of orders in a portfolio. Each house will have its own strategists with methods on how to place orders on parts of the portfolio in the market at different times. It's about balancing the need to trade the portfolio quickly (i.e. before prices move) and cheaply (i.e. without having to trade outside of the price).Are you trading on the house books or for clients?