[ B U Y- S I D E
I N T E R V I E W
O
n 16 November
last year, The
TRADE’s Leaders
in Trading awards
ceremony hon-
oured the top per-
formers in their respective fields at
the Savoy Hotel in London.
The evening saw more trading
leaders than ever before get together
to celebrate talent and innova-
tion across the industry. Of those
honoured, trading veteran Sascha
Becker from Allianz Global Investors
received the coveted Long-Only
Trader of the Year award, as voted
for by his peers.
“It feels awesome to win the pres-
tigious Trader of the Year award,”
Becker says. “I admit I feel under
pressure to continue doing a good
job, but I thrive on this. I am ambi-
tious enough to put myself under
enough pressure.”
He is no stranger to being
awarded for his achievements in
the trading industry. Becker was
awarded the Trader of the Year
award for mid-cap trading at the
Leaders in Trading ceremony in
|
S A S C H A
B E C K E R ]
2015. The winners of these awards
are determined from online votes
via buy-side, sell-side, exchange
operators and technology vendor
market participants.
“What I can see behind the award
is that we have good contacts and re-
lationships with our brokers and that
we are well placed to position our
client orders effectively. That makes
my job worthwhile,” Becker adds.
He began his career as a bond
options trader at a local broker in
Frankfurt. In anticipation of the
firm closing its floor broking, Beck-
er took the decision to leave for
Deutsche Bank where he became a
proprietary trader for pan-Europe
stocks.
He has now been with Allianz
Global Investors for over 10 years.
He started out trading French
equities and emerging markets,
but these days Becker covers
German programme trading and
exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
So what’s the secret behind his
success?
Becker believes it’s a combina-
tion of discipline, patience, strong
“I admit I feel under pressure to continue
doing a good job, but I thrive on this.”
16
TheTrade
Spring 2017
knowledge and an opinion on what
the market will do that makes a
trader a true leader in their field.
His team of traders with whom
he works very closely with on a
daily basis are also very important.
Becker explains his team ensure
he is always kept up-to-date on
market movements, industry news
and data.
Passion and enthusiasm
“It’s very important you have
strong communication with your
trading team because if you miss
something then you miss opportu-
nities,” he says.
For young people looking to
get into the asset management
industry, Becker believes they must
be passionate and enthusiastic be-
cause when everyone is interested
in the job it makes it more fun.
“Unfortunately, today many
people are doing this job just for
the prestige. Compared to when I
started it is probably more difficult
to find people who embody those
values,” he explains.
As for any trader today, technolo-
gy and regulation play a major part
on every trading desk. FinTech has
made the job more efficient, with
alternative methods of trading
cropping up on what seems like a
daily basis.
“Over the last few years we have
implemented new technologies to
trade ETFs on more platforms and
extended the possibilities to trade
ETFs directly,” Becker says.
He explains his role has changed
greatly over the years, as the
once-standard voice trading has
been steadily replaced with elec-
tronic trading.