Morgan Stanley's guide to keeping your banking job in 2015

Deutsche's banking analysts aren't the only ones to have looked into the future and seen inchoate nastiness; Morgan Stanley's analysts have had a peer into the ether too and they've also glimpsed formless horrors and the need for further cost cutting.

In a note out today with the subheading, 'weak Q3 underscores restructuring for EU wholesale banks,' Morgan Stanley's banking analysts outline where and why things aren't going so well in investment banking and whose jobs are likely to be at risk as a result. This is what you need to know.

1. Nooooo: get out of credit! 

Search firm the Options Group has established that 43% of senior persons in credit sales and trading feel an urgent need to do something else. Morgan Stanley's analysts help explain why. They think fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) revenues may have fallen by 10-25% year-on-year in the third quarter, and that credit bore the brunt of this.

2. This year, you want to be working in equities for a US bank

Spot the happy place in the chart below.

 

3. And next year, you want to be working in IBD for a US bank

... But you don't want to be working in FICC for a European.

4. Right now, you really don't want to be working in ECM - especially not at J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs...

5. And nor do you want to be working in DCM at Credit Suisse... 

6. Nor in M&A at UBS (although Goldman would be fine)

7. And you should have nothing to do with investment banking at RBS