What They Don’t Teach You About Capital Markets
For most students and junior bankers, “investment banking” is taught as a linear, rational process. You analyse a company, build a model, prepare a polished deck, pitch to the client, and eventually execute a transaction. Actually, that description captures only half of the job, and in many cases not the half that determines whether a deal actually gets done.
Capital markets sit at the intersection of investment banking, sales & trading, and investors (still within the bank’s private side) and the skill set required is quite different from what most textbooks, interview guides, or early analyst training programmes emphasise.
Investment Banking vs. Capital Markets
Traditional investment banking is client-centric and narrative-driven. The work is structured, iterative, and highly polished. You have time, sometimes even weeks or months, to refine a model, stress assumptions, iterate slides, and carefully craft a story around valuation, strategy, and positioning. Capital markets, by contrast, are more market-centric and execution-driven. The ultimate client is not just the issuer, but the market itself. Investor appetite, liquidity conditions, positioning, technical flows, and sentiment matter as much– and in some cases more - as theoretical valuation.
This is where the bridge to the public side (sales&trading, investors) becomes critical. Sales teams speak daily to investors, understand positioning in real time, and know where accounts are in terms of name and sector interest related to a specific deal/product. Traders understand liquidity, price sensitivity, and how much risk the market can realistically absorb. Capital markets bankers must synthesise this information quickly and translate it into actionable advice for corporate clients.
Different Styles of Communication
One of the biggest adjustments for bankers moving closer to capital markets is adapting to a very different communication style. Investment banking communication is more polished, structured, and formal. Slides are refined endlessly, wording is debated, and consistency matters. Precision is prized. Sales & trading communication is direct, immediate, and sometimes brutally honest.
Capital markets sit in between. You must be able to speak both languages, reassuring and advising a CFO while simultaneously absorbing blunt feedback from investors who are not necessarily diplomatic. You still have to work on longish and polished presentation – though usually not as long as in investment banking – but at the same time need to be able to get on a last-minute call and explain a deal that has just been launched on what could be the impact and readacross for them.
The Reality of Accelerated Deals
If you want to understand capital markets properly, look at accelerated transactions: blocks, overnight equity raises, accelerated bookbuilds. In these situations, there is no time for beautifully layered models or endless sensitivities. You may have a few hours from launch to pricing. Assumptions are simplified. Experience and judgment matter more than technical elegance.
Execution risk becomes the dominant factor. Pricing a deal too aggressively risks potentially being long a stock for an extended period of time, with the associated loss reflecting poorly on the team P&L for the year. Pricing too conservatively damages the issuer and can risk the bank being excluded from the trade, given the high level of competition involved. Getting this balance right requires an intuitive understanding of investor behaviour and a lot of “real-life” experience, something no spreadsheet can fully capture.
Why Some People Love Capital Markets
Capital markets roles are often a great fit if you:
- Enjoy deal flow and fast execution
- Like being in front of clients early
- Prefer breadth and judgment over hyper-detailed modelling
- Enjoy coordinating multiple stakeholders under time pressure
Less Perfection, More Judgment
One of the hardest lessons for technically strong bankers is accepting that perfect analysis does not guarantee a successful outcome. In capital markets, speed, credibility, and judgment often trump analytical depth, though obviously there’s also a high degree of subjectivity and risk involved, as markets can be either irrational (at least in the banker’s eyes) or move extremely quickly, so that even a seasoned capital markets banker can face various unsuccessful deals in their career. Capital markets bankers absolutely need to understand models. But they don’t live inside them. The skill is knowing what matters and what doesn’t under time pressure, and being comfortable making decisions with imperfect information.
Career Optionality: The Honest Trade-Off
It’s also important to be honest about career paths. Traditional private equity still tends to hire more heavily from IB M&A and coverage teams. Hedge funds, on the other hand, often recruit more from sales & trading, especially for public-markets or trading-oriented strategies. Capital markets sit in between, which can be both a strength and a challenge. The role gives you:
- Strong investor exposure
- Market intuition
- Transaction execution skills
A Skill Set That Travels Well
One underappreciated advantage of capital markets is how transferable the skills are outside pure banking. Once you move into roles where raising capital, managing investors, or executing transactions is central - infrastructure, renewables, growth equity, or corporate finance - the capital markets mindset becomes extremely valuable. You’re no longer just advising on deals; you’re responsible for making them happen in the real world.
What They Don’t Teach You About Capital Markets
For most students and junior bankers, “investment banking” is taught as a linear, rational process. You analyse a company, build a model, prepare a polished deck, pitch to the client, and eventually execute a transaction. Actually, that description captures only half of the job, and in many cases not the half that determines whether a deal actually gets done.
Capital markets sit at the intersection of investment banking, sales & trading, and investors (still within the bank’s private side) and the skill set required is quite different from what most textbooks, interview guides, or early analyst training programmes emphasise.
Investment Banking vs. Capital Markets
Traditional investment banking is client-centric and narrative-driven. The work is structured, iterative, and highly polished. You have time, sometimes even weeks or months, to refine a model, stress assumptions, iterate slides, and carefully craft a story around valuation, strategy, and positioning. Capital markets, by contrast, are more market-centric and execution-driven. The ultimate client is not just the issuer, but the market itself. Investor appetite, liquidity conditions, positioning, technical flows, and sentiment matter as much– and in some cases more - as theoretical valuation.
This is where the bridge to the public side (sales&trading, investors) becomes critical. Sales teams speak daily to investors, understand positioning in real time, and know where accounts are in terms of name and sector interest related to a specific deal/product. Traders understand liquidity, price sensitivity, and how much risk the market can realistically absorb. Capital markets bankers must synthesise this information quickly and translate it into actionable advice for corporate clients.
Different Styles of Communication
One of the biggest adjustments for bankers moving closer to capital markets is adapting to a very different communication style. Investment banking communication is more polished, structured, and formal. Slides are refined endlessly, wording is debated, and consistency matters. Precision is prized. Sales & trading communication is direct, immediate, and sometimes brutally honest.
Capital markets sit in between. You must be able to speak both languages, reassuring and advising a CFO while simultaneously absorbing blunt feedback from investors who are not necessarily diplomatic. You still have to work on longish and polished presentation – though usually not as long as in investment banking – but at the same time need to be able to get on a last-minute call and explain a deal that has just been launched on what could be the impact and readacross for them.
The Reality of Accelerated Deals
If you want to understand capital markets properly, look at accelerated transactions: blocks, overnight equity raises, accelerated bookbuilds. In these situations, there is no time for beautifully layered models or endless sensitivities. You may have a few hours from launch to pricing. Assumptions are simplified. Experience and judgment matter more than technical elegance.
Execution risk becomes the dominant factor. Pricing a deal too aggressively risks potentially being long a stock for an extended period of time, with the associated loss reflecting poorly on the team P&L for the year. Pricing too conservatively damages the issuer and can risk the bank being excluded from the trade, given the high level of competition involved. Getting this balance right requires an intuitive understanding of investor behaviour and a lot of “real-life” experience, something no spreadsheet can fully capture.
Why Some People Love Capital Markets
Capital markets roles are often a great fit if you:
- Enjoy deal flow and fast execution
- Like being in front of clients early
- Prefer breadth and judgment over hyper-detailed modelling
- Enjoy coordinating multiple stakeholders under time pressure
Less Perfection, More Judgment
One of the hardest lessons for technically strong bankers is accepting that perfect analysis does not guarantee a successful outcome. In capital markets, speed, credibility, and judgment often trump analytical depth, though obviously there’s also a high degree of subjectivity and risk involved, as markets can be either irrational (at least in the banker’s eyes) or move extremely quickly, so that even a seasoned capital markets banker can face various unsuccessful deals in their career. Capital markets bankers absolutely need to understand models. But they don’t live inside them. The skill is knowing what matters and what doesn’t under time pressure, and being comfortable making decisions with imperfect information.
Career Optionality: The Honest Trade-Off
It’s also important to be honest about career paths. Traditional private equity still tends to hire more heavily from IB M&A and coverage teams. Hedge funds, on the other hand, often recruit more from sales & trading, especially for public-markets or trading-oriented strategies. Capital markets sit in between, which can be both a strength and a challenge. The role gives you:
- Strong investor exposure
- Market intuition
- Transaction execution skills
A Skill Set That Travels Well
One underappreciated advantage of capital markets is how transferable the skills are outside pure banking. Once you move into roles where raising capital, managing investors, or executing transactions is central - infrastructure, renewables, growth equity, or corporate finance - the capital markets mindset becomes extremely valuable. You’re no longer just advising on deals; you’re responsible for making them happen in the real world.
