Senior female Morgan Stanley trader joins hedge fund less than a year after promotion

Despite diversity initiatives, female traders in investment banking are still all too scarce. Senior female traders are even rarer, which is why Angelie Moledina’s departure from Morgan Stanley to hedge fund Moore Capital is significant.

Moledina worked at Morgan Stanley for 18 years and in July 2013 was named as sole head of its European liquid flow rates business, after Ciaran O’Flynn, the co-head, moved on to the role of co-head of electronic trading.

At the end of April, she joined Moore Capital Management, according to regulatory filings, and we understand that she has taken the role of portfolio manager, focusing on macro markets.

The trading floor has long been a testosterone-fuelled environment – our own figures suggest that women comprise just 15% of those working in the sector – despite ongoing research into the negative influence of the hormone on risk-taking. Women have also typically struggled to make it into the senior ranks in a front office investment banking position, so the departure of a long-serving senior female trader will be a blow to Morgan Stanley.

In March, Glenn Hadden, Morgan Stanley’s global head of interest rates trading and Moledina’s direct report, left the bank over differences with his superiors over how the business was run. Investment banks’ rates trading business have continued their dismal 2013 with a poor first quarter this year, which has helped drag down revenues across most firms’ FICC divisions.

Moore Capital Management has been expanding over the past few months, bringing in traders and portfolio managers from both banks and buy-side competitors including a nine-strong team from SAC Capital Advisor’s defunct London operation.

Women hold just 22.5% of portfolio management roles within hedge funds, according to research by Rothstein Kass, despite suggestions that a lack of testosterone on the trading floor can do wonders for fund performance.

Moledina sat on the global rates operating committee, global fixed income management committee and European fixed income operating committee at Morgan Stanley.

She has an MA in Economics from Pembroke College, Cambridge.