I am a quant at a top IB. I am interested in seeing the big picture outside of my narrow research scope. I don't have much contact with traders but i am very interested in learning about trading. How do you learn what traders do as an outsider?

If you would like to widen your horizons then may I please suggest that you become a Quantitative Risk Manager. Cutting edge quant skills and market awareness will position you as a prime contact point between the traders and the pure control/reporting guys. Maybe you'll spend less time changing measures but you'll be exposed to many different issues across Market & Credit Risk as well as all types of underlyings and associated products.But you need to find a firm with the appropriate structure, of course!

Is this really a serious question?If you are really a quant employed in an IB then I fail to see how you cannot know something about the trading activities.You should be able to go to some seminars arranged by traders (they usually do in major banks) and find out more about what they do.Failing that just email the head of the desk you're models are used for and ask him to arrange a meeting with a trader to perhaps give you a live demonstration of what he does.

My guess is that you are slow. It's just a matter of time, until you develop an efficient way to think about the big picture. Really, the big picture is just a cartoon, and if you try to see it as a realist in all it's detail, you will be overwhelmed.When you read a book, do you notice the color of the lines around the pictures, the letters in each word, the shape of the paragraph formatting? No, you just try to get a simple impression, a single idea.Similarly, the world of trading is just a big crowd of parrots all shouting what the other guy is shouting. "The Fed is raising, the Fed is easing, if the payroll number is flat, the Fed will pause. China is coming."Refco's Andy Priston was interviewed on television yesterday. Asked what it took to make millions, he said you have to know what moves the markets. In other words, you just have to know what will trigger people to buy or sell.It's very superficial and simplified! Because as a Wall-Street trader, you are just an extension of clients. If they are buying a lot tomorrow, you are buying a little bit now to front-run them. You are faciliating their speculating.By the time they enter the unknown land of the future where buyers are supposed to appear to take their positions, your long position will be long gone. They carry positions great distances, you just help them load the truck.