Callum McDonald, fixed income e-sales at Mizuho, began his career in recruitment but through drive and personal ambition, built layers of skills that made him invaluable in the sales-trading function.
His path into the trading arena required proving his ability and interest in technology through further academic qualification, to supplement his people skills and education in economics, ultimately giving his team a member with both the quantitative and qualitative skills needed to optimise client experience and support efficient trading.
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Interview Transcript
Dan Barnes Welcome to Trader TV Generation Trader, where we explore the positive impact of diversity on trading desks through the careers of traders. I’m Dan Barnes. Joining me today is Callum McDonald, fixed-income e-sales at Mizuho. Callum welcome to the show.
Callum McDonald Thank you very much.
Dan Barnes To start with. You studied economics at university. But what started your career?
Callum McDonald So my first role out of university was in recruitment, specifically within the engineering market. It was my first taste of working in the city. I had a great time. I really enjoyed it. I also spent a year up in Leeds, where I went to university before coming back down and pursuing a career in investment.
Dan Barnes And what sort skills do you think you were building in that role?
Callum McDonald I think the main skills that you build in that role, first of all, stakeholder management, you’re talking to a lot of different people. For example, you could be talking to a candidate one day, an engineering manager the other day and the main thing is to make sure that you are adapting to everyone’s needs. So having some sales tactics behind that. And also having some sort of empathy, I mean, these are roles in which people are going to earn a living. I think also resilience. Things don’t go your way necessarily. People can have a change of heart, not go to an interview, etc. and you just have to accept that things maybe aren’t in your control and it’s something that I’ve tried to take forward in future jobs.
Dan Barnes I think it’s a really important lesson. So then what was your entry into finance?
Callum McDonald So my first role was an internship within a European bank, Prime brokerage. It was in their ops teams doing management information. So it was my first insight into the data world. I was using a lot of data visualization tools that I hadn’t learned before, and I just had to pick it up on the job. My second internship I did back to back ones at the same bank, was on the trading floor within the fixed income data team, so it was more of a continuation of what I’ve been doing, slightly more advanced in terms of the technology that I was using, pivoting on to a more market-orientated focus. I went on to self-study outside of work programing, specifically within the Python and SQL space, where it was really helpful to do these data visualization, automate a lot of tasks. After I had done the internships where I was, I moved on to an operations role at a different bank where I was working closely with quants and structuring desks. That’s where I decided I wanted to upskill within programing, and I decided to do a computer science master’s whilst I was working. So I was at distance one at the University of Bath. You know, I wanted to get something on my CV to kind of prove that I could do these programing skills and really move my career forward.
Dan Barnes So what does that open for you?
Callum McDonald I think once you have something on your CV where you’ve shown that you want to kind of pivot your career in a different direction. That was the biggest thing for me in terms of going into an interview, is that I could show that I wanted to learn more, and I was applying what I was doing in my masters to day-to-day work so I could naturally kind of learn, pivot into my role, automate new things, take on new projects. So internally, that helped in terms of gaining more stakeholder management and externally showed, you know, I was serious about sort of driving business in a technical way. I moved on to a client analytics role at a North American Bank, where I was doing quite analytics across the trading floor. So across all desks, credit rates, equities, FX. That really opened my eyes to how a trading floor operates. It wasn’t necessarily anything market or client-facing, but I was getting to know the products, getting to understand how certain people on certain decks were doing things. It was really good for me. The more I could automate, the more I could do in, the more I could learn.
Dan Barnes How does this apply specifically to your current role then?
Callum McDonald We are working with large data sets, RFQ data coming in all the time, and we’re trying to capture that information, understand how our clients are working. And I think the best thing for me is that, you know, you learn how to do all this programing and automation, but sometimes it doesn’t work because clients are different. So then different models, you know, might apply to different set of clients, your piecing and things together. You’re not just an expert on client flow. You have to have a market structure element of it. You have to understand how clients are trading from a yield curve perspective, are they set up to trade differently on one end of the curve compared to another. Is there a more systematic way that they’re doing it on one trading desk compared to maybe a different product? So we’re looking at that in quite a lot of detail from a holistic client view or a trading desk view all the way through to like specific curves or specific products.
Dan Barnes Yeah, no, that’s really good. And it’s very interesting to see how you’ve sort of layered skills. And then having studied economics, actually taking a very nontraditional route into trading. How do you see diversity of skillsets and diversity of thought on trading desks impacting sales and trading today?
Callum McDonald I think having that mixture of business knowledge, i.e. traders and sales that are talking to clients day in, day out on a trade by trade basis and having that almost like data science, data analytics mindset in order to structure business and trading strategy is quite powerful. And I think that’s the future, especially on fixed income. I mean, if you look at an FX desk or an equities desk, they’re probably further down the line in terms of, you know, how quantitative things are in the market at the moment. It’s quite fragmented in terms of data and whatnot. So you do have to have a mixture of market specialists, product specialists and data experts like myself, who are kind of all working together for the same end goal. I think getting a story across through data is also as important as understanding your client. You know you have to be able to sell your idea or this model that you’ve built to get some traction.
Dan Barnes That’s great. So then what advice would you give somebody who’s looking at a role in sales and trading today?
Callum McDonald I think the main thing is to be patient. I mean, these things take time, especially if you’re coming from a background outside of finance. You know, the barriers to entry on a trading floor can be quite high. Yeah. So, you know, nurture your skill set, find your niche, and just try and be curious. Try and be constantly better.
Dan Barnes That’s very good advice. Kevin, thank you so much.
Callum McDonald Thank you.
Dan Barnes I’d like to thank Callum for his insights today and of course you for watching. To catch up on our other shows including Trader TV This Week at 6:45 a.m. UK time every Monday morning go to Tradertv.net.
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