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Traders have daily meetings with the head of trading to review the positioning of the portfolio before the market opens . The rest of the day is spent working orders and relaying any interesting flows or ideas seen or heard in the market to the portfolio managers . Anything related to specific sectors or market news is relayed back to analysts .
Lao says that communication and trust between the traders , portfolio managers and analysts is a key part of everyone ’ s role at Boussard & Gavaudan . The team consists of eight traders , with three based in Paris and the others in London alongside most of the frontoffice , including all European analysts .
“ We all have expertise in certain areas , but we can cover for each other in any case ,” Lao explains . “ I work in partnership with my colleague Benjamin , covering the core part of the fund with single stocks and equity discretionary trading . So , we ’ re sourcing liquidity for the equity book and managing the positions which requires close day-to-day supervision .”
The smaller structure at Boussard & Gavaudan proved advantageous in early 2020 in its agility and quick response at the start of the global pandemic . Within a week , Lao says the entire trading team had established an efficient remote working setup .
" Brokers don ’ t always have the full picture on the size of our orders anymore because that flow has shifted ."
“ Given the stress and the market volatility that we experienced in March , failure in our remote system was not an option . Everyone needed to be able to work and we spent the necessary time ensuring that everything was running perfectly .”
The sudden distance between the colleagues and market volatility posed challenges for the teams at the time . Like most funds , communication was impacted at Boussard & Gavaudan early on during the crisis as traders .
Portfolio managers and analysts went from spending 12 hours a day in each other ’ s company to working entirely from home . But platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams became the new norm and daily meetings ensured everyone was kept in the loop on the working plan each day .
From a trading perspective , Lao says the extreme volatility became one of the toughest elements of her job . As transaction costs surged and spreads widened ,
40 // TheTRADE // Spring 2021