"Once in a lifetime" - Markets interns wrap up an unforgettable summer

By Nora Engvall, Carl Hörfelt and Erik Langwagen 

Eight weeks in to our summer internship, we are on our final day at Nordea Markets. In our final blog, we share what we’ve been up to the last weeks, and wrap up an unforgettable summer – on so many levels.

Week 6 in Fixed Income Sales & Trading was a packed week. We ran through the desk with people from both Sales and Trading, on the credit side and the rates side – and got a warm welcome into a case that felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity: act as traders with 1 billion SEK to invest, building strategies around our own market view. 

So, we shorted asset swaps, placed bets on the Fed and traded CDS indexes. The universe of products felt endless, and so did the ways to lose or make money on them. What we did not have endless amounts of was time, which made the whole week feel like a sprint. Buying and selling for real, getting bids and offers from actual traders, turned out to be as fun as it sounds. On Friday, we presented our strategy, survived a round of pointed questions, and came out the other side with a result we were happy with. A truly great experience.

Outside the trading floor, the week included after work dinner and drinks with the team, burgers followed by drinks at Stockholm under stjärnorna, and ice cream on the terrace. Great week, amazing team!

Warmest and most social team

Week 7 in FX Sales we got one of the warmest and most social teams of the summer. The usual business case kicked off on Monday: look at prospective clients and assess their FX risk to see who might be a relevant customer for the bank. The case ran in two parts: first, one pagers on the most interesting prospects. Then a deeper presentation on our top three picks, mapping their current FX exposure and proposing hedging strategies for each.

Along the way, we sat in on AutoFX (automated FX trading), where we went through different hedging approaches, and got into the details of transaction risk versus translation risk and how options fit into the picture.

The team also knows how to end a week. After work drinks ran late into the night, and it was a blast!

Another spectacular week

Week 8 with the Risk Solutions team was our final week, and we were asked to pull together everything we had picked up since week one – and dust off whatever we had quietly forgotten. 

The final case we got was to analyze a fictional company's FX and interest rate risk using nothing but its annual report. That meant back solving for key metrics, calculating them by hand, and finding a clear way to present them. From there, we proposed hedging suggestions and weighed the cost of each one, from both the client's side and the bank's. Another spectacular week which made us realise just how much we’ve learned and grown during this summer.

Work aside, week eight also served up some very nice extras. A fancier Monday lunch at Missumashu for their chicken katsu, more terrace lunches, and a visit to the Bloomberg office, where the team showed us around their office. Risk Solutions turned out to be as friendly and welcoming as every other desk (if possible), always ready with a question answered or a nudge in the right direction.

A rare and valuable experience

This is our last day, and it feels strange to write this. The summer at Markets gave us a rare and valuable experience, and it is one we will remember for a long time. Asked to sum up the summer in three words, we would say: exciting, challenging and fun. Every team we rotated through was generous with their time and their knowledge, and we hope to cross paths with all of them again, soon. 

Thank you all, see you!  

/Nora, Erik and Carl

If you missed out on the previous blog by Nora, Carl and Erik, you can read them here:

Three weeks, five desks, countless lessons learned – interns on their summer journey

“Our brains have gotten a proper workout” – Meet Markets interns Nora, Carl and Erik