What I Learned on a Trading Floor at HSBC: Understanding Markets from the Inside

In this article, Abel ARAYA (ESSEC Business School, Master in Finance, 2025) shares his experience on HSBC’s trading floor in Paris. He explains how this opportunity helped him understand how a global markets division operates, how teams interact, and what makes the environment of a trading floor so unique.

From private banking to markets

Before joining HSBC, I was working in private banking at Milleis Banque Privée. It was a good introduction to finance, but I wanted to understand how the markets worked behind the scenes. Joining HSBC Continental Europe as a Business Manager Assistant within the Markets COO (Chief Operating Officer) team gave me the chance to discover that world for the first time. The COO function within a markets division is responsible for the operational and financial oversight of the trading floor: it sits at the intersection of strategy, finance, and day-to-day management, supporting the front office without being directly involved in trading itself.

About the company

HSBC was founded in 1865 as the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, created to finance trade between Europe and Asia. More than a century and a half later, it has become one of the largest banking and financial services groups in the world. Headquartered in London and listed in London, Hong Kong, New York, Paris and Bermuda, the group held around 3.2 trillion US dollars in assets at the end of 2025, employed roughly 211,000 people across some 56 countries and territories, and served more than 40 million customers.

On the wholesale side, where I worked, HSBC brings together its corporate and institutional clients under the Corporate and Institutional Banking (CIB) division, which generated around 27.6 billion US dollars in revenue in 2025. CIB was created on 1 January 2025 by combining the former Global Banking and Markets business with commercial banking activities outside the UK and Hong Kong, with the ambition of ranking among the top three global wholesale banks. Within CIB, the Markets and Securities Services teams provide liquidity, financing and risk-management solutions across fixed income, credit, foreign exchange, equities and securities services.

Its clients are large corporates, financial institutions, asset managers, hedge funds and governments that rely on the bank to trade, hedge and finance their activities across the world. In this space HSBC competes with the other large global markets houses, such as JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs in the United States, and Deutsche Bank, Barclays, BNP Paribas and Société Générale in Europe. Its main differentiator remains its international network and its historical strength across Asia and emerging markets.

My apprenticeship took place at HSBC Continental Europe, the group’s Paris-headquartered subsidiary covering continental Europe. Since the sale of its French retail banking business on 1 January 2024, HSBC Continental Europe has refocused on corporate and institutional clients, with a consolidated balance sheet of 251 billion euros in total assets at the end of 2025.

During my apprenticeship, this reorganization was still under way, which made it a particularly interesting time to observe how such a large organization adapts its structure while continuing to run its business day to day.

Logo of HSBC.

Source: the company.

My apprenticeship

Within the Markets COO team, my work focused on the financial and organizational aspects of the trading floor. I contributed to budget monitoring, forecasts of upcoming expenses, and internal reports related to costs and resources. I was involved in the broker review process and in the preparation of financial summaries presented to management.

This position gave me a transversal view of the Markets division and helped me understand how each team contributes to the overall structure. I interacted with many different stakeholders: the COO in Germany, who was managing a restructuring process, teams in India working on operational data, and senior managers in Paris overseeing the desks. These collaborations taught me how coordination and communication are essential to keep such a large platform running efficiently.

Life on the trading floor

Working so close to the trading floor was one of the most rewarding parts of my experience. Even though my role was on the management side, I was constantly in contact with the desks. I often visited traders, salespeople, and structurers to better understand their activities and the financial implications of their operations. One moment that stayed with me was a conversation with a rates trader during a period of elevated volatility in the European bond market. He explained how the sudden widening of spreads between Italian BTPs and German Bunds was forcing him to adjust his hedging positions in real time, something I had only ever read about in textbooks. These interactions helped me connect the numbers I was analysing to the real market dynamics they represented.

The atmosphere on the floor was intense and collaborative at the same time. Information flowed constantly between desks, from rates to credit to repo, and decisions were made quickly. Observing this rhythm every day helped me understand how interconnected market teams are, and how much relies on clear communication and mutual trust.

What I learned

This experience gave me a real understanding of how a trading floor operates, both economically and humanly. I learned how a large institution like HSBC manages its costs, allocates resources, and balances strategic priorities with budget realities. I also saw how economic pressures, regulatory changes, and internal dynamics influence decisions at every level of the organization.

Spending time close to the Fixed Income desks gave me a concrete sense of how sales, traders, and support teams work together. I realized that beyond products and numbers, markets are built on relationships, coordination, and constant adaptation.

Most importantly, this experience taught me the value of curiosity and initiative. By going to speak directly with teams, asking questions, and trying to understand their world, I gained insights that no spreadsheet could have given me. It made me appreciate both the complexity and the humanity of financial markets.

This one-year apprenticeship was a very strong first step into the world of markets. It helped me confirm that the natural next step for me would be a front-office internship as a Sales in Fixed Income, where I could build on what I learned and continue to grow within a trading environment.

Financial concepts related to my professional experience at HSBC

I present below three financial concepts related to my internship: market liquidity, collusion risk, and profit and loss (P&L).

Market Liquidity

Market liquidity refers to the ease with which a financial instrument can be bought or sold in the market without significantly moving its price. A liquid market has many buyers and sellers, tight bid-ask spreads, and the ability to execute large transactions quickly. An illiquid market, by contrast, forces participants to accept worse prices or wait, which can turn a theoretically profitable position into a loss once execution costs are taken into account.

In fixed income markets, liquidity is not uniform: it varies by product, by maturity, and by the time of day. Sovereign bonds such as French OATs or German Bunds are among the most liquid instruments in the world, with spreads of just a few basis points. Corporate bonds, by contrast, trade far less frequently and can see spreads widen dramatically in periods of stress. Structured products and exotic rates instruments can be even harder to unwind quickly.

One of the things I discovered at HSBC is the central role brokers play in providing liquidity. Not all brokers are equal: some are specialists on particular products or market segments. For example, inter-dealer brokers such as TP ICAP or Tradition are well known for their activity in rates and repo markets, where they connect banks anonymously to facilitate large transactions. During the annual broker review process that I participated in, traders would assess which brokers had provided the best liquidity, the most reliable pricing, and the fastest execution across different products. This review directly influenced how trading flows were allocated across brokers the following year. It made me understand that liquidity is not just a market property: it is also a relationship, built and maintained between institutions over time.

Collusion Risk

In financial markets, collusion risk between traders and brokers refers to a specific form of conflict of interest: a trader systematically routing a disproportionate volume of transactions to a particular broker, not because that broker offers the best execution, but because of a personal relationship, reciprocal favours, or informal arrangements. This behaviour is harmful to clients, who are entitled under regulation to receive the best available price and execution, a principle known as best execution, enshrined in the MiFID II directive in Europe.

The risk is subtle and not always easy to detect. A trader may genuinely believe that their preferred broker is the best, when in reality they are simply more comfortable with them. Over time, this can result in a concentration of flows toward one or two brokers that is not justified by objective performance criteria such as pricing quality, speed of execution, or market access. In the worst cases, the relationship can involve gifts, entertainment, or the sharing of confidential information, all of which are strictly regulated.

This is exactly what the annual broker review process at HSBC was designed to monitor and prevent. As part of my role in the Markets COO team, I contributed to this review, which involved analysing the distribution of trading flows across brokers and comparing it against objective performance metrics. If a trader was sending a significantly higher share of their volume to one broker without a clear justification, that anomaly would be flagged and discussed. The process ensured that broker relationships remained grounded in performance rather than personal preference, protecting both the bank and its clients. Working on this review gave me a direct understanding of how compliance and governance function in practice on a trading floor, and why they matter.

Profit and Loss (P&L)

Profit and Loss (P&L) is the daily measure of how much money a trading desk has made or lost. It captures the combined effect of market movements, trading activity, and fees. In my role within the Markets COO team, the P&L was one of the most important indicators I worked with. Each morning, the desks produced a flash P&L report, and my team consolidated these figures to produce management summaries that were reviewed by senior leadership. I also contributed to the analysis of P&L trends over time, identifying which desks were performing above or below forecast and understanding the drivers behind deviations. I learned that P&L is not just a financial result: it is a real-time signal of how well a desk is managing its positions, its risks, and its client relationships. Monitoring P&L every day gave me a concrete and dynamic view of how financial markets translate into business performance.

Why should I be interested in this post?

If you are a student in business or finance thinking about a career in financial markets, this post can help you understand what to expect from a first experience on a trading floor. Many students have a strong theoretical background in finance but are uncertain about how these concepts translate into day-to-day work. Through my experience at HSBC, I discovered that even a non-front-office role offers an exceptional vantage point: by working within the Markets COO team, I was exposed to P&L reporting, liquidity management, broker reviews, and budget processes that are central to how a bank manages its markets activities.

This post is also relevant if you are considering roles in Markets COO, Business Management, or Finance Control within a bank. These positions are often overlooked by students who focus exclusively on trading or sales, yet they offer direct exposure to the full scope of a markets division and are increasingly valued as a stepping stone toward front-office responsibilities. Whatever your target role, understanding how a trading floor operates, its rhythms, its pressures, and its culture, will give you a real advantage in interviews and on the job.

Useful resources

HSBC — Corporate and Institutional Banking (including Markets and Securities Services)

ESMA — European Securities and Markets Authority

BIS — OTC Derivatives Statistics

About the author

The article was written in July 2026 by Abel ARAYA (ESSEC Business School, Master in Finance, 2025).

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