While eFinancialCareers has previously written about how to become a quant and the lifestyle of a strat at Goldman Sachs, we've now got a chart breaking down how Goldman's Global Markets division (referred to as sales and trading in other banks) sees its spectrum of strat talent.       

Per the chart below, Goldman sees strats in the Global Markets division as sitting on a spectrum between coding and quant. Their Algo or Core Strats are responsible for programming, infrastructure, high-volume coding and the trading platforms. Data Strats, as the name suggests, look at big data and machine learning. On the quant side of the spectrum, Trading Strats are busy pricing derivatives, heding risk, modelling assets and developing trading tools. Then there are the Sales Strats responsible for generating ideas and structuring trades. They do what is broadly referred to as financial engineering which top quant programs like Carnegie...

It is a genuine relief to many — including me — that Wednesday’s U.S. inflation numbers came in lower than consensus forecasts had predicted, both for the headline and core measures. This is good news for Americans facing crippling bills, eroding purchasing power and mounting economic insecurity. It is also good news for markets, illustrating the extent to which the economy and finance are aligned on the importance of controlling a multi-dimensional menace that has been eroding the prospects for inclusive and sustainable growth.   

That’s the good news, and it is welcomed progress after a year-plus of almost nonstop disappointments. Yet, with inflation still too high, it is progress that needs to be maintained and built-upon in the months and quarters ahead, especially given what else the the economy as a whole is telling us.   

BEIRUT, Aug 11 (Reuters) - An armed man demanding deposits frozen by his bank took an unspecified number of hostages on Thursday at the Federal Bank of Lebanon, a security source and a Reuters witness said.

Lebanese banks have limited withdrawals of hard currency for most depositors during the country's three-year financial meltdown, which has left more than three-quarters of the population struggling.

The man entered the Federal Bank of Lebanon branch in the Hamra neighbourhood in west Beirut just before noon on Thursday with a firearm, the security source told Reuters.

The lack of social mobility in the UK’s financial and professional services sector poses a major threat to Britain’s “competitiveness and productivity,” the head of the Law Society has warned.

The Law Society president’s warning comes after a new report from the City of London Socio-Economic Diversity Taskforce showed those from working class backgrounds are significantly underrepresented in the UK’s professional services industry – particularly at the most senior levels.

All in all, more than two-thirds (64 per cent) of senior leaders in the UK’s major law firms, accountnacy firms, and financial services companies come from professional family backgrounds, compared to just 37 per cent of the country’s workforce, the report says.

Meanwhile, just 21 per cent of senior professional services industry leaders come from families in which their highest earning parent worked in a manual job, compared to 39 per cent of the UK’s workforce.

More than...

Publicans have called on ministers to introduce an energy price rise cap for venues amid pleas that bill hikes threaten to “be a pub killer.”

The British Institute of Innkeeping (BII) said the majority of its members were experiencing a minimum 300 per cent increase in energy costs, all while venues attempt to recover from the side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a letter to ministers, the trade body urged Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and business minister Kwasi Kwarteng to issue grant support for pubs, as well as introduce a cap for businesses similar to the one for households.

It comes as pubs are facing heftier operational costs and staff shortages while punters are tightening their purse strings amid historic levels of inflation.

An avalanche of cost increases has left “many long-standing, successful pubs simply unviable,” according to the BII’s chief executive officer Steve Alton.

The trade body has also called for a full...

A new virus, Langya, is suspected to have caused infections in 35 people in China’s Shandong and Henan provinces.

It’s related to Hendra and Nipah viruses, which cause disease in humans.

However, there’s much we don’t know about the new virus – known as LayV for short – including whether it spreads from human to human.

Therefore, City A.M. caught up with one of the world’s leading experts in this field, Allen Cheng, Professor of Infectious Diseases at Monash University.

He has shared what we know so far, including how sick people are getting, where the virus came from and what we can learn from related viruses.

There were 262,000 initial jobless claims in the week ending August 6, the weekly data published by the US Department of Labor (DOL) showed on Thursday. This print followed the previous week's print of 248,000 (revised from 260,000) and came in slightly lower than the market expectation of 263,000.

Further details of the publication revealed that the advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1% and the 4-week moving average was 252,000, an increase of 4,500 from the previous week's revised average.

"The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 30 was 1,428,000, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week's revised level," the DOL said.

TAIPEI, Aug 11 (Reuters) - China's threat of force is undiminished, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Thursday, even though Beijing's largest ever military drills around the island seemed to be scaling down.

Furious about a visit to Chinese-claimed Taiwan last week by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China launched ballistic missiles and deployed multiple aircraft and warships in recent days to simulate sea and air attacks.

China said on Wednesday it would keep up patrols but had "completed various tasks" around Taiwan, signalling a possible end to the war games even while keeping up pressure. read more

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Illinois is rebranding an invasive carp in the hopes of encouraging people to eat it - and solving a decades-old issue that has been threatening the ecosystem of the U.S. state's waterways.

"We've launched a new name, 'copi', to help people consume this delicious fish and help us do our work in keeping them out of the waterways," said Kevin Irons, assistant chief of fisheries for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Irons and the DNR want everyone to start calling the abundant fish formerly known as Asian carp "copi."

Italy’s centrist parties agreed to form a new alliance ahead of general elections in September to challenge both the right-wing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni and the Democrats. 

Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s party Italy Alive will join forces with Carlo Calenda’s Azione, after the latter

Applications for US unemployment insurance rose for a second week and held near the highest level since November, indicating continued moderation in the labor market.

Initial unemployment claims increased by 14,000 to 262,000 in the week ended Aug. 6, Labor Department data showed Thursday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 265,000 applications.