Sales-trading skill varies between hedge and long-only

Determining which broker is best at sales trading for Asian equities depends on whom you ask. According to a survey of buy-side equity traders conducted by AsianInvestor, hedge funds’ preferred sales traders are at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

But ask the long-only desks, and you get a totally different set of names, led by Citi, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and CLSA.

The survey was conducted over the course of September from an eligible universe of 400 traders across 173 buy-sides. We solicited nominations of top clients from sell-side institutions, and buy-sides nominated by multiple brokers were included in the eligibility pool.

Ultimately we received responses from 96 individuals across 56 firms, of which about one-third were hedge funds and two-thirds were long-only desks.

Responses were weighted according to the number of participants per buy-side firm, size of Asian equity assets, and (when asked to select up to three answers) in order of preference.

The full results of the survey will be published in the forthcoming October edition of AsianInvestor magazine.

Within sales trading, we also asked the market to vote for its preferred brokers in terms of facilitation, block trading, service for futures and options, service for swaps and synthetics, and the best fundamental research/trading ideas.

Deutsche Bank was the only firm to be voted in the top three by both long-only and hedge respondents for its facilitation desk, while only UBS was selected by both categories of buy-sides for block trades. There was no consensus between these categories when it comes to research.

However, the same firms dominated futures & options, and swaps & synthetics, winning the favour of both long-only and hedge funds, with Goldman, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley ruling the top ranks.