Elif Hucumenoglu a eFX trader at Mizuho discusses how she made her way from the highly technical quant sales desk at Morgan Stanley to the sales trading desk at Mizuho Bank.
She unpacks how her combined skills in coding and her exposure to financial services helped her to understand trading strategies through both a buy-side and sell-side lens.
The eFX trader delves into how she is applying her tech knowledge and experience today to the sales trading desk and how artificial intelligence is playing a greater role across the front office, such as in algo development.
Hucumenoglu also discusses the changes diversity is having on the desk over the last decade and shares her advice to graduates or entry-level candidates interested in becoming a trader.
Interview Transcript
Dan Barnes Welcome to Trader TV Generation Trader, supported by Market Access, where we explore the positive impact of diversity on trading desks through the careers of traders. I’m Dan Barnes and joining me today is Elf Hucumenoglu, an eFX trader at Mizuho. How did you start in financial services?
Elif Hucumenoglu I studied electrical and electronics engineering for both my bachelor’s and master’s degree. My focus was in signal processing, optimization, statistics, and machine learning techniques. At the end of my bachelor’s degree, I was able to take an internship at Morgan Stanley, which would count as a project grade for my university, Imperial College. For six months I worked in the e-trading technology team and I was using my technical skills. I was coding quite a lot in e-trading algorithms. But at the same time I got the feel of financial services and started to understand how the economy is shaped, how it is shaped with the macro events and I was fascinated. Then I moved to a quant sales role in Morgan Stanley. I would go speak to the clients, talk about their trading strategies. I was the internal communication point at the same time. So I would go to the trading desk. I would go to our quants. I would try to help the client as much as possible, but at the same time, I started to develop an understanding myself. I started to understand how trading strategies are built from the client point of view, from the internal point of view and I started to think I want to be able to experience this feeling myself. I want to be able to take risk. That was a moment of realization for me.
Dan Barnes So from that position, how did you want that to develop?
Elif Hucumenoglu So I knew that I was interested in a trader role, but I was so busy with all the meetings I was going to, and I didn’t have time to go through any application process. And I was extremely lucky when Mizuho recruitment team reached out to me and they were like, we have a trader role. Like I didn’t have time to prepare. So like I just went, met the team and they taught I would be the right fit because I’m coming from a technical background. It would mean I would be able to perform the traders job. At the same time, I had the exposure to the markets at the time because I was speaking to the client. So it was like a mutual interest. And I decided to go ahead with the move from Morgan Stanley to Mizuho. I’m so lucky with the management support that we have at Mizuho at the moment. Whatever we want to bring to the team, we are highly encouraged, and I always feel like I’m able to push myself more and more outside of our comfort level, where we see the growth happen.
Dan Barnes What does that mean for applying new skills and taking the skills you already had, and using them?
Elif Hucumenoglu Day to day as an eFX trader, I look into the client flows, optimize the client flows, adjust our skill levels, look into the market’s impact we might be causing for the client flows as well as our flow. And at the same time, this means we are also pricing a client, which involves a true mid-rate discovery for us. These use signal processing techniques and optimization. We are using a lot of statistics on desk, and these are all coming from my engineering background, which I’m so lucky. Not everyone is lucky enough to use their skills from their educational backgrounds in their day to day job. At the same time, of course the technology is evolving. At the moment we are highly focused on artificial intelligence and what it might mean for us. As we are using algos on desk. Things are starting to pick up for the technology enhancements and we are trying to attend conferences, educational sessions to improve ourselves as much as possible.
Dan Barnes Given your background, can you tell us how do you see diversity increasing in the sales and trading roles that you’re looking at, and what impact is diversity having on the desk today?
Elif Hucumenoglu When I was an intern seven years ago, I was the only female. I was the only engineering background. After the master’s degree, I went back to MS (Morgan Stanely.. And I started to realize we are hiring more people. They are hiring more and more females. After I moved to the front office quant sales role, I started to see things pick up and I work in an electronic trading desk, which means technology is highly involved there, which means we need more and more diversity. We need more engineers. We have more at Mizuho, even like social sciences, like law of degrees, because that’s where you can observe a stress management we are hiring from even like psychology degrees, like high skill sets range that we can observe in the markets division.
Dan Barnes What advice would you give to somebody who’s looking at a career in trading today?
Elif Hucumenoglu I would say first focus on the soft skills and communication skills. That’s such a must in trading because we are working with people, it’s long hours and we need to be able to manage stress levels. Prioritization skills are highly important because you have a lot of things coming at you at the same time, and you want to be able to prioritize and identify what needs to be dealt with first. That’s such an important skill to work towards. Also, technical skills, of course. An appetite to learn because things are changing. We need to be up to speed with the markets. So that appetite is such an important thing to have but it comes from within. Hard to practice, but something we are looking for. I am so thankful to be able to do this job, and it’s so important to do what you like and what you allow day to day. Hopefully people will find their way into their dream roles.
Dan Barnes That’s fantastic. And I thank you so much.
Elif Hucumenoglu Thank you so much for having me.
Dan Barnes I would like to thank Elif for her 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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