Why most power trading moves are external
64% of role changes on the register are moves to a different employer. 36% are internal promotions or transfers. People also stay in role longer before an internal move than before an external one.
Read together, those numbers describe a market where careers are built more by moving than by waiting, and they carry an uncomfortable implication for any desk that judges the market by its own experience.
A desk that measures the market by its own leavers will underestimate the churn around it. Most desks lose people rarely, so their internal picture says the market is stable. Meanwhile the market as a whole is turning over externally at nearly twice the internal rate, which means the competitor's trader you assumed was settled is statistically more likely to move firms than to be promoted where they sit. The stability a desk feels is its own; it is not the market's.
The tenure pattern sharpens the point. Waiting longer before an internal move means the internal route is the slow route, and ambitious people in this market have noticed. The ones building careers deliberately treat the external market as the promotion mechanism: the step up in book, mandate or title arrives with a new employer more often than with the old one. Which is why the best approach conversations are not about dissatisfaction at all. The person is not unhappy. They are simply on the faster of the two available tracks, and they know it.
For retention, the implication runs the other way. If the external market is where promotions happen, then holding your best people means matching that mechanism internally: real step-ups, on external timelines, before the approach call comes rather than after. The counter-offer is the expensive, late version of this. The early version is cheaper and does not teach people that resignation is how you get a raise.
And for hiring, the number is quietly encouraging. Two thirds of the market's moves are to new employers, which means the pool is more movable than desks tend to assume. The people are not locked in. They are waiting for the right approach, and most of them will make their next move externally, to someone. The only question a search settles is to whom.
Case notes, desk-build maps and real moves across European power.
Desks spent the year hiring against volatility rather than against growth. The distinction matters because the two produce different vacancies.
Interview processes at trading firms are usually short and usually good. Traders interviewing traders ask sharp questions, decisions come quickly, and the candidate leaves with a clear picture of the book, the risk lines and the people.
A CV shows employers and dates. For a power trading hire, that is most of what it shows, and it is not the information the decision needs. Four things are worth establishing before an interview, not during one.
Senior power trading, quant and optimisation hires across European markets.