QuoteOriginally posted by: johnself11jpapa - fanatic point which i overlooked.... over the last 5 or so years the "focus" client sector in the OTC interest rate derivs biz has been the hedge funds (despite that these are the most difficult, sneaky, and ruthless "clients" the pure size of the sector has made it the most pursuded).... and a jpapa asserts, a technical background (trader) is more of an asset now than ever.... this is not to say that the financial institutions, real money accounts, and coroprate treasurers,etc have no interest in speaking to someone with a sollid risk-based perspective, but the hedge fund community is by far the most oriented this way......Agree with both John & Jpapa.To clarify, I suppose when you refer to "trading knowledge" or the likes, you mean market/vanilla trading expertise (as opposed to exotics trading, say)..

yes, generally vanilla trading knowledge is what is most usefull.... in my experience hedge funds are generally not large customers of exotic derivatives - i think this is because they would rather piece together the vanilla components of an exotic derivative themselves and avoid the vig of doing an exotic package.... moreover, because hedge funds are so large in capital these days, they really need to stick with liquid products in which they can put on trades of significant size....