2027 Institutional Equity Derivatives & Trading Co-Op (New York)

Overview

Morgan Stanley’s Institutional Equity Division (IED) is a world leader in the origination, distribution, and trading of equity, equity-linked, and equity-derivative securities. The division serves a global institutional client base, providing clients with innovative product solutions designed to help generate alpha within their portfolios.

Please apply to this program if you are interested in more quantitative, trading, or structuring/content roles within Equities. Apply for the 2027 Institutional Equity Co-Op Program (United States) if you are interested in Sales, Prime Brokerage, or Sales-Trading roles within Equities.

Co-ops spend approximately 6 months fully immersed on a desk within IED.

Desks (Derivatives and Trading)

Derivatives and Trading

Derivatives and Trading is responsible for the generation and facilitation of liquidity, as well as innovative product and trading solutions across a variety of derivative products, including:

• Equity options (both exchange-listed and over-the-counter)
• Securitized derivatives
• Convertible bonds

Products and services are delivered across a full range of distribution channels, including corporate, retail, and institutional clients.

Derivative Sales – Trading & Thematic & Quantitative Strategy

The Sales-Trading team covers hedge funds (equity long/short, macro, volatility-focused funds) and asset managers (mutual funds, pensions, endowments).

Responsibilities include:

• Distributing derivative ideas and research
• Pricing and executing a suite of products, including listed and OTC options, futures, customized equity basket swaps, exotic options, dispersion, variance swaps, and ETFs
• For select roles away from flow-oriented responsibilities, creating content via positioning models, custom baskets, and option structures for client distribution

Flow Trading (Single Name Option/Index)

The index desk is part of the Equity Derivatives Trading group and focuses primarily on trading volatility of major U.S. equity indices (e.g., SPX, NDX, RUT), as well as emerging markets (e.g., EEM, EWZ) and macro ETFs (e.g., HYG, TLT).

Major products include listed and OTC options, variance swaps, volatility swaps, and VIX-related products.

The Single Name Option (SNO) desk trades vanilla options—both listed and OTC—on single-name equities (e.g., AAPL, AMZN, TSLA) and sector ETFs.

Flow Trading (Exotics / Quant Investment Strategies)

The Exotics desk is part of Equity Derivatives Trading and focuses on trading, hedging, and pricing exotic equity-linked derivatives.

Exotic options have non-standard features compared to traditional “vanilla” options. Examples include volatility target options, knock-out options, and conditional variance swaps.

The desk serves a wide range of clients, including:

• Large institutional investors seeking bespoke hedging solutions and opportunities for leverage
• Retail investors seeking equity-linked yield products in the form of structured notes

For each exotic derivative traded, the Exotics desk is responsible for warehousing and efficiently hedging the complex risk using tradable instruments (including vanilla options and a wide variety of other market instruments).

The Exotics desk is further broken down into sub-teams (pods) based on the underlier of the derivative traded (stocks, indices, and custom baskets/QIS indices). Interns will spend time with members on each pod.

ETF Trading

The ETF team focuses on market-making across both domestic and international ETFs. The role emphasizes generating alpha-producing strategies through pricing models for domestic and international ETFs, futures, leveraged ETF and ETP dynamics, index carry arbitrage strategies, and other opportunistic thematic trading.

Qualifications, Skills, and Requirements

• Availability to work full-time, in-person from January to June 2027 from role location
• Pursuing an undergraduate degree with technical proficiency in areas such as Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, or Engineering, with a graduation date after December 2027
• Minimum 3.0 GPA
• Comfortable applying statistical analysis and deriving value from data
• Enjoy solving complex problems requiring deep analytical and quantitative reasoning
• Familiarity with coding languages such as Python, Q, R, SQL, or VB
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Collaborative, quick learner, adaptable, versatile, able to multi-task, and strong work ethic
• While no prior knowledge of finance or trading is required, candidates must have a keen interest in finance and markets

Application Process

Deadline to apply: September 20, 2026 by 11:55pm ET.

Applicants will be asked to rank the desks in order of preference. If selected to progress, candidates will complete desk-specific interviews. Note: applicants may be selected to interview for more than one desk.

Candidates must apply with their resume through the Morgan Stanley website. Resumes will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and students are encouraged to apply as soon as they are ready.

Compensation

Expected base pay rate(s) for the role will be $52.89 per hour at the commencement of employment. However, base pay (if hired) will be determined on an individualized basis and is only part of the total compensation package, which may include commission earnings, incentive compensation, discretionary bonuses, other short- and long-term incentive packages, and other Morgan Stanley sponsored benefit programs.