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nature of our business , which can be very OTC and very esoteric in terms of what we ’ re looking at , you do require a degree of trust , and understanding between yourselves and your partners . They ’ re helping you to achieve your investment goal for your client , and that ’ s what we try to build upon .
“ In every engagement that we have with a sell-side partner , it ’ s a case of us really trying to ensure that it suits both parties . We have a number of electronic routes into the market , and yes those are important , but retaining and developing these relationships is almost more important than it was four or five years ago . agrees . “ It was the chance to take on equity and FX as well as fixed income . It ’ s a shame that the opportunity came about because of headcount reduction , but I think it ’ s a chance for some areas of the trading desk to take a step back and reassess their use of technology and of data .
“ I ’ d like to get those parts of the desk to shout louder about how good they are . The average tenure of a trader at Jupiter is about 15-20 years . They are very experienced , they know the market very well . It goes back to etiquette ; I think we are well-liked by the sellside and the way we go about doing business – I hope – encourages people to want to do business with us .”
Retaining relationships Coming full circle , Poole still believes – as he did at the start of his career ( and the start of this article ) that relationships are crucial .
“ Despite the onset of electronification , trading systems , data-driven decision-making , I ’ m still a firm believer that it ’ s a people-led business . Given the
The Covid curse “ I think Covid has led to a lot of people losing that element , and not realising quickly enough the value in facetime , the value in developing relationships and in-person . I think people got a bit lazy during Covid – be it meeting people , be it trading – I think people hid behind the electronification of fixed income . We certainly saw a spike in the volumes done electronically , and that then led to a difficulty in trading blocks . We ’ re now coming out of Covid , and people are starting to have those inperson conversations about how we can get balance sheet and risk provision from our Tier 1 counterparties .
“ The primary markets have really dried up this year , and a lot of people use the primary markets as a liquidity tool . So if you want to get a block done , and access some risk , then you need to have trust and you need to have that relationship . That will have been eroded over time if all you ’ ve been doing is putting them in competition with each
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