The work
Execution connects investment decisions to the order book. Each desk serves two Fundamentals teams per term alongside the house order programme, with assignments rotating through the year. Desks hold no proprietary portfolio: fills, fees and rebates belong to the originator of the order.
Working an order
The parent ticket defines the instrument, side, quantity and price limit. The desk chooses how to split it into smaller orders, when to trade and how to balance urgency, liquidity and cost. Planned completion is a target; an order remains active until it fills, is cancelled or expires under the published rules.
During execution, the team must:
- Monitor filled shares, shares reserved by outstanding child orders and the remaining quantity.
- Coordinate competing tickets within the desk’s shared participation allowance.
- Adjust the timing, size and pricing of child orders as market conditions change.
- Ensure every child order follows its parent’s instruction and remaining quantity.
- Record interventions such as pauses, restarts and cancellations.
The desk may cancel or replace child orders, but it cannot amend or cancel the parent instruction. Requested changes must go back to the originator.
Tools and development
QTE provides a manual trading blotter, time-weighted average price (TWAP) and percentage-of-volume schedulers, and a shared record of parent and child orders.
Analysts can execute manually, use the provided time-weighted and percentage-of-volume schedulers, or operate a team algorithm. Developers build the desk’s own scheduling and order-placement strategies on QTE’s shared framework.
The work combines live monitoring with testing: partial fills, simultaneous child orders, participation limits and recovery all affect whether an instruction is delivered reliably.
How performance is measured
The score combines delivery-adjusted cost savings (80%) and delivery (20%). Results are compared with a hypothetical reference based on recorded prices and available simulated liquidity. Unfilled quantities matter, and incomplete delivery limits the cost credit a desk can earn. The aim is thoughtful, cost-effective completion.
Who this suits
Students who stay organised, pay attention to detail and enjoy practical decisions from changing information. Coding is optional for analysts; development work focuses on reliable execution algorithms and close collaboration with their users.
Team structure
4 teams · 6 members per team · 24 members total
- Head of Execution — 1 per team
- Execution Analyst — 4 per team
- Execution Developer — 1 per team