Morgan Stanley hired an electronic trading salesman from Virtu

Contrary to some reports, hiring has not ground to a halt in investment banks - people are still turning up, even if doing so simply means logging on at a desk in the spare room. 

The latest new joiner at Morgan Stanley is Ronak Patel, a former electronic sales trader from Deutsche Bank ITG, who joined this month from high frequency trading firm Virtu.

Patel is joining Morgan Stanley's Electronic Trading (MSET) unit as a quant coverage professional - selling the bank's electronic trading functionality to quant hedge funds. 

Morgan Stanley is among the banks still adding staff despite the challenges presented by homeworking during the virus. Earlier this week, JPMorgan emailed all its new recruits globally asking them to delay joining for a month and promising to pay their salaries from their original start dates.

Patel may have his work cut out. Quant funds have struggled in recent weeks: Renaissance Technologies, Two Sigma and DE Shaw all lost money during the recent volatility.

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Photo by Kirill Sharkovski on Unsplash