Buy-side Perspectives Issue 14 Special edition | Page 38

Buy-side profile
The SECRET
to being a good
TRADER
Kevin Flood
Lead Fixed Income Dealer, Royal London Asset Management
Kevin shares his personal story of how he started his career on the sell side and
the reasons why he moved across to the buy side in 2016, together with the
challenges he faces in the world of fixed income buy-side trading.
Tell us about how you started working in finance?
I started my career back in 2001. I’d recently
graduated from University with a degree in
Psychology and was hired into the Derivative
Operations team at Deutsche Bank in London. At the
time, this area of the market was rapidly expanding,
new products were evolving and Deutsche Bank was
at the cutting edge. Despite being a long way from
the front line, I loved learning about the business,
quickly embraced the entrepreneurial nature of the
institution and the meritocratic opportunities on
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offer if you were willing to work hard – I was hooked!
I was promoted across a number of operational roles
before being offered an opportunity in 2005 to join
a new Loan Exposure Management Group as a credit
trader. I spent the next 10yrs helping to manage
Deutsche Bank’s corporate loan book across London
& New York, specialising in pricing illiquid credit
risk and trading CDS, options and loans. During this
time I had to deal with the devastation and fallout
from the Global Financial Crisis, the subsequent
damage to markets and had a front row seat for the
experimental path that Central Banks set us on.
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