Embrace the chaos: A Morgan Stanley derivatives exec on life at the desk
To decode what industry upstarts need to succeed, BI spoke to a top exec at Morgan Stanley.
Iliana Bouzali, a global derivatives head, shared her advice and experience on the trading floor.
When you think about Wall Street, you usually think about M&A — but with dealmaking in the slumps, big banks' sales and trading desks have become the stars of the show.
In the first half of the year, several major banks reported record-breaking revenues from helping institutional clients, such as hedge funds and pension funds, trade stocks, bonds, and derivatives. A volatile 2025 market has brought more price swings, more trading opportunities, and more client activity than ever before.
With all eyes on this booming business, Business Insider set out to shine a spotlight on Wall Street's sales and trading business. What's life like at the desk? What does it take to thrive in this fast-paced job? And what should young people aspiring to work in sell-side sales and trading know?
For answers, we turned to Iliana Bouzali, global head of derivatives distribution and structuring for Morgan Stanley. She started her career as an intern at Morgan Stanley in 2003. She was pursuing an economics degree at Yale when she fell in love with the trading floor and never looked back.
"The energy of a trading floor is like nothing else. It's not for everyone, but if you like it, you love it," she told Business Insider. "It's a very flat architecture, there's no hierarchy. If you have something useful to say, you say it. If there's a problem to solve, it doesn't matter what your title is, you solve the problem. And it can be very infectious, so I was hooked."
Whether you're pitching clients on the products they need to grow and protect their portfolios (sales) or executing on those orders (trading), Wall Street trading floors are known as fast-paced, high-intensity environments where people thrive on the adrenaline and competition of following the market. To succeed, she said, you must embrace the chaos.
"Life, markets, clients — can be complicated. It will be chaotic at times," she said, adding, "The best young hires don't panic, they adjust under pressure."
Here is Bouzali's advice for interns and industry upstarts after 21 years rising in the ranks on the trading floor of one of Wall Street's most competitive banks.
Embrace insecurity rather than avoid it
Bouzali said she often tells young hires to use their inevitable feelings of fear and insecurity as motivation to work hard instead of faking confidence or know-how.
"I always like telling our incoming interns: You will be insecure, it's a fact of life," she said. "Embrace it and let those insecurities, your fears, become a driving force. Use them instead of pretending that they're not there."
Bouzali, for example, admitted to feeling both excited and terrified during her first summer on the trading floor, and was worried she didn't know enough about finance.
"It's important to not compare yourself to peers and start competing against a more honest metric — the version of yourself that plays it safe."
Learn to deal with "opacity"
One of Bouzali's earliest lessons was learning not to expect the structure and direction she was used to at university, where the path to success is clearly laid out in syllabi and measured via homework and tests.
"A trading floor is particularly opaque, and that ambiguity is a feature, it's not a bug," she said.
If that's confusing, it's meant to be, Bouzali said.
"It's something that I try to convey to our interns early on," she said, adding, "You will not always be handed tasks or told exactly what to do and how to do it."
Opacity is not a signal to wait, but to move, she explained.
"You have to throw yourself into problems. You have to sniff out what matters and what doesn't matter. You have to pin point what people's bottlenecks and pain points are and just start being useful," she said.
Make decisions with less information than you think you need
Bouzali referenced what Jeff Bezos once coined as his "70% rule." It argues that you should make decisions with 70% of the information, and Bouzali says it's something she tries to live by.
"In certain domains, if you wait for 80% or 90% of the information, the opportunity will be gone," she said. It's a mantra she thinks more industry upstarts should adopt.
"I sense that young people — and generally all people — overthink, overplan, and wait too long to curate the perfect path forward," she said. "Many decisions can be reversed, few decisions are irreversible."
Chase impact rather than promotions
No one — not even the best investors in the world — can predict the future. Bouzali knows this and suggests young people learn to focus on what's in front of them.
"Don't obsess over the next 10 years," she said. "Just focus on winning the next 6 to 12 months."
Getting things done versus chasing titles will naturally lead you to the next big thing.
"Promotions don't follow ambition. They follow impact," Bouzali said. "A better question than 'How do I get ahead?' is 'What are the hard things that need to get done that I could do?'"
Learn to slow down
Bouzali's job demands she stay up to speed on the news and market at all times, so she uses reading as a way to diversify her perspectives outside the here and now. From obscure medieval history to art criticism and strange fiction, she prefers to read things "off the beaten path."
"I try to avoid the super contemporary and super trendy because I really want to develop completely different mental threads," said Bouzali of her book choices. "It's been very good for me to just step completely outside of what is trendy here and now and find older, slower modes of thought."
Read the original article on Business Insider
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA)'s CEO Has A Great Relationship With Trump, Says Jim Cramer
We recently published . NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. After bleeding close to $600 billion in market value in January amidst the DeepSeek selloff, Wall Street's AI chip darling, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is once again the most valuable company in the world. The firm has benefited from growing investor bullishness about the long-term prospects of AI. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)'s shares closed the week 1% higher after big tech's continued persistence to spend billions of dollars to buy AI chips. Cramer discussed the impact and the CEO's relationship with President Trump: 'All CapEx go up, it's all NVIDIA. . .it's really good for NVIDIA. But of course, NVIDIA, the President talking about breaking them up, we'll get to that later. It was an out of body comment. Previously, the CNBC TV host commented on NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)'s shares and parabolic moves: 'What is the solution to this? Look, in my forthcoming book, How to Make Money in Any Market, I have banished my antiparabola bias. I have a method I reveal of picking five stocks to go alongside an index fund with some money added each month. I state point blank that if you are in your 30s or older, you should own one speculative situation like an Oklo, okay, or a Joby. Just one. It could fail you after going parabolic. Moreover, if you're under 30, you can pick two speculative names out of five because you've got enough time to make back any potential losses. Photo by Javier Esteban on Unsplash Now, you may think I'm reckless for endorsing any of these even with caveats, but it's time to admit that for many years now, speculative stocks with great growth, they've worked. Oh, and let's not forget, they don't have to stay speculative. NVIDIA stock has had many parabolic moves, including the one that started in April. To keep yourself out of these runs because of a principle that stopped working ages ago, that's to be blind to change, and I don't like it. I don't want to be that way.' While we acknowledge the potential of NVDA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the . READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
I Asked ChatGPT What Would Happen If Billionaires Paid Taxes at the Same Rate as the Upper Middle Class
There are many questions that don't have simple answers, either because they're too complex or they're hypothetical. One such question is what it might mean for billionaires to pay taxes at the same rate as the upper middle class, whose income starts, on average, at around $168,000, depending on where you live. Find Out: Read Next: ChatGPT may not be an oracle, but it can analyze information and offer trends and patterns, so I asked it what would happen if billionaires were required to pay anywhere near as much as the upper middle class. Here's what it said. A Fatter Government Larder For starters, ChatGPT said that if billionaires paid taxes like the upper middle class, the government would bring in a lot more money — potentially hundreds of billions of dollars more every year. 'That's because most billionaires don't make their money from salaries like upper-middle-class workers do. Instead, they grow their wealth through investments–stocks, real estate, and businesses–which are often taxed at much lower rates or not taxed at all until the assets are sold,' ChatGPT told me. Billionaire income is largely derived from capital appreciation, not wages. In other words, they make money on their money through interest. And as of yet, the U.S. tax code doesn't tax 'unrealized capital gains' so until you sell your assets, you could amass millions in appreciation and not pay a dime on it, ChatGPT shared. Learn More: What Do Billionaires Pay in Taxes? Right now, many billionaires pay an effective tax rate of around 8% or less, thanks to loopholes and tax strategies. Meanwhile, upper-middle-class households earning, say, $250,000 might pay around 20% to 24% of their income in taxes. (Keep in mind that the government doesn't apply one tax bracket to all income. You pay tax in layers, according to the IRS. As your income goes up, the tax rate on the next layer of income is higher. So you pay 12% on the first $47,150, then 22% on $47,151 to $100,525 and so on). So, if billionaires were taxed at the same rate as those upper-middle-class wage earners, 'it would level the playing field–and raise a ton of revenue that could be used for things like infrastructure, education or healthcare,' ChatGPT said. The Impact on Wealth Equality I wondered if taxing billionaires could have any kind of impact on wealth equality, as well. While it wouldn't put more money in other people's pockets, 'it could increase trust in the tax system, showing that the wealthiest aren't playing by a different set of rules,' ChatGPT said. It would also help curb 'the accumulation of dynastic wealth,' where the richest families essentially hoard wealth for generations without contributing proportionally to the system. But it's not a magic bullet. 'Wealth inequality is rooted in more than just taxes–wages, education access, housing costs, and corporate ownership all play a role,' ChatGPT said. Billionaires paying taxes doesn't stop them from being billionaires, either, it pointed out. Taxing Billionaires Is Not That Simple While in theory billionaires paying higher taxes 'would shift a much bigger share of the tax burden onto the very wealthy,' ChatGPT wrote, billionaires are not as liquid as they may seem. 'A lot of billionaire wealth is tied up in things like stocks they don't sell, so taxing that would require big changes to how the tax code works.' Also, billionaires are good at finding loopholes and account strategies — it might be hard to enforce. What's a Good Middle Ground? We don't live in a black and white world, however. There's got to be a middle ground, so I asked ChatGPT if there is a way to tax billionaires more, even if it's not quite how the upper middle class are taxed. A likely compromise would come from a policy decision, which isn't likely to be forthcoming anytime soon. President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill only offered more tax breaks to the wealthiest. However, policy proposals that have been floated, include: A minimum tax on billionaires where they might pay around 20% of their overall income Limiting deductions and closing tax loopholes that allow them to significantly reduce taxable income Tax unrealized gains (those assets that have only earned but not yet been sold), gradually. ChatGPT agreed that billionaires could pay more than they currently do, even if they don't pay exactly what upper-middle-class workers pay in percentage terms. 'The key is to design policies that are fair, enforceable, and politically feasible.' I asked how realistic such policy proposals are, and ChatGPT told me what I already knew: They're 'moderately realistic' but only with the 'right political alignment.' More From GOBankingRates 9 Downsizing Tips for the Middle Class To Save on Monthly Expenses This article originally appeared on I Asked ChatGPT What Would Happen If Billionaires Paid Taxes at the Same Rate as the Upper Middle Class Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Inicia sesión para acceder a tu portafolio Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Not Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT) But RTX, Say A Lot Of People According To Jim Cramer
We recently published . Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT) is a key American defense contractor when it comes to the aerospace industry. Its fighter aircraft form the backbone of US air superiority. The shares have lost 11.9% year-to-date on the back of a major 10.8% dip in July after its Q2 profit dipped by a whopping 80% on the back of a classified $1.6 billion loss on a classified aeronautics project. Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT)'s Q2 revenue of $18.16 billion also missed analyst estimates of $18.57 billion. No wonder Cramer made the following remarks about the firm: 'RTX, by the way, pushed by a number of people, saying that's the defense stock you want to be in, not Lockheed Martin.' Source: Pexels Previously, Cramer had advised viewers to stay long on Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT): 'I like Lockheed Martin too much to tell you to do that. Every time I see Jim Taiclet, I say to myself, why does anyone want to sell that stock with a 3% yield and a great book of business and a terrific CEO? No, you stay long, Lockheed Martin.' While we acknowledge the potential of LMT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the . READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data