IB-Average retirement age?

What's the average retirement age for IB and how "comfortable" are you?

And slightly off topic (maybe President Ben will have the best idea about this)-Is there a lot of money in FOREX trading? Say on trading floor with a big bank like RBS?If so roughly how much and is it at all comparable to IB pay?

Cheers everyone

Reply 1

azrioch

Well, retirement is all very individual. I once read an article breaking out how a million dollar compensation doesn't go very far in NY anymore. It is enough to live a very nice lifestyle, but unless you live way beneath your peers in IB, you probably won't be able to save a huge amount of money. People leave banking to do other things too, though.

Trading is make or break. There is theoretically a near infinite amount of money that can be made. At IBs you get a cetain percentage of your profits, one that is lower than if you worked at a hedge fund, most times. You start out as an analyst and learn your product(s) for a while depending on the complexity before you're allowed to trade and work toward your compensation. Then you're given limits of how large your account is. The more experienced you are and the greater your track record, the more you'll have. There used to be a limit on how much you could make in your first few years, but I think that it's been removed at some BBs in an attempt to keep talent from HFs.

IBankers go in knowing exactly how much they're going to make and how hard they're going to have to work. Traders make at least as much as IBankers and it shoots up from there. People argue over how many traders are actually pulling in the million + bonuses in their early-mid twenties, and I won't even speculate, but overall successful traders make -way- more than IBankers.

Almost every year you hear of those one or two traders taking home compensations larger than the CEO at any given bulge bracket. Go look up the 10k reports for some of these banks, you'll see that M&A/Underwriting is peanuts compared to the trading profits. :wink:

Oh, also, if you make some phenominal amount trading, the banks will pay you a very competitive bonus so that other banks/hedge funds don't steal you over. With trading, if you're good, you have a skill that's highly in demand and if the bank doesn't keep you happy, there are tons of other places that will. IBanking doesn't get like this until you hit managing director and have a rolodex of contacts. Until you hit MD, you're just a grunt, no matter how you look at it. You just become a more responsible grunt with the option to delegate work.

EDIT: I saw on a forum that some RBS analyst pulled in 1 MM this year x 2 year guarantee.

Also, this is just my understanding, I haven't worked in any banks yet and won't until this summer, but I know several people that do.

Reply 2

President_Ben

azrioch

<stuff>

Good post

Think that'll do...

Reply 3

rishman

really good post-thanks

Reply 4

azrioch

Hey, thanks. Glad I could help.

I actually just glanced over and saw some horrible spelling mistakes. Can only say that I was very tired last night. :redface: