Steep learning curves and new friendships

A deep-dive into the various projects

Vegard and Nanna in Fixed Income:

The past two weeks, we were fortunate to join Fixed Income. Here, our project included several different tasks like looking at institutions’ and investors’ ESG preferences in the bond market, analyzing the historical development of high yield bonds, IG- bonds and green bonds, analyzing corporate high yield bonds and giving a buy/sell recommendation to the trader based on our findings.

We’ve learned so much. Among others, this was a great opportunity to learn and use Bloomberg extensively on a practical case.

Ella and Erlend at the trading desk:

We have been working at the trading desk for our second project. Our project was to find out if issuance of NOK bonds with long maturities affects the Norwegian forward curve. We compared issuance of long-term NOK denominated bonds with Norwegian forward swap rates and looked for patterns.

Indeed, we were able to prove our hypothesis, at least partially. This project has been quite demanding, with steep learning curves and a lot of questions asked. Luckily for us, we’ve been surrounded by highly competent traders who were more than happy to answer our (very) frequent questions in the span of two weeks, while busy in the global rates- and FX derivatives markets. We even got to pick trading literature from their personal library, lucky us.

Isabella and Sondre in Large Corporate Norway:

At LC&I Large Corporate we took a deep-dive into the salmon farming industry, where we examined the capital expenditures across the different segments within the industry. This included extensive research on the main market players within conventional, land-based, closed/semi-closed and offshore salmon farming.

Our analysis included a breakdown of the different capex factors, such as license cost and investments in property, plant & equipment. The goal of this was to compare how both the total capex and the different capex factors vary across the different segments. Ultimately, our analysis included an average capex per kilogram produced for all of the segments. Additionally, we considered the impact of ESG regulations going forward. Working with seafood expert, Anders Ødegård and the rest of the LC&I team was highly insightful.

Thank you all for your big support.

So much more than work

If you have read some of our previous blogs in this series, you’re most likely aware that the internship is not only about working on our projects.

In between work - and ice cream - we've also attended the “Summer Academy”, which is held every Thursday evening, where different speakers/colleagues from different parts of Nordea share their expertise within their respective fields.

This time, we've had the pleasure of meeting Lars Even Klepsland from NOK Rates Trading, and Jørgen Bruaset, Head of Equity Research Norway, who told us about their experiences working with trading and equity research. It was really interesting and gave us an insightful introduction to capital market, bonds, rates stocks – you name it!

In keeping with tradition, after the “Summer Academy”, we had our weekly social evening, and this time round with a competitive game of minigolf.

Of course, it was the young and talented Martin Kolltveit from Markets FX Sales who won the golf tournament!

In addition to the social evenings on Thursdays, we have played floorball together and also had dinner together on other evenings.

So, as you probably can tell, the past two weeks have sped by incredibly fast, with working on interesting projects, cracking challenging tasks and getting to know a lot of new colleagues.

The fast pace and the unique opportunity to rotate between different departments, not to mention working together wish such skilled and kind people, make our internship great and exciting. Last but not least, it’s also a great way to establish new friendships and widen your network.

We are excited for the next four weeks 😊. We’ll be back!

Meanwhile, have a look at some of the previous blogs.