Macro Credit Investment Analyst

Garda Capital Partners (Garda) is a multi-billion dollar alternative investment firm with over 21 years of experience deploying relative value strategies across fixed income markets for institutional investors. Garda has offices in Wayzata, New York City, West Palm Beach, Geneva, Zug, Copenhagen, Singapore, and Scottsdale.

Garda is looking to hire a highly skilled and motivated Investment Analyst with a strong background in Macro Credit to work out of our New York office alongside a Macro Credit Portfolio Manager. The ideal candidate will possess in-depth knowledge of macro credit instruments (e.g., cash bonds and bond ETFs, CDS, CDX options), preferably with experience in both modeling/analysis and trading. In addition, the ideal candidate will have proficiency in high-level programming languages such as Python or R and the ability to analyze large datasets, automate processes, and develop analytical tools for the Portfolio Manager.

Position Responsibilities:

• Assist in designing and building market screeners/filters, risk aggregation/options pricing sheets, process automation, and other critical analytical infrastructure for the macro credit trading effort, both in a self-directed manner and working together with Garda’s quantitative development team.
• Support the Portfolio Manager with relevant data-driven market and credit instrument analysis on an ad hoc basis. This includes handling large datasets, backtesting, identifying, and extracting meaningful insights while accounting for common statistical pitfalls (e.g., overfitting).
• Build and maintain sell side relationships and evaluate sell side research for useful, repeatable insights.
• Analyze potential market reactions to macroeconomic and idiosyncratic developments and provide actionable insights to Portfolio Manager for managing risks and opportunities. This includes generating new trade ideas and assisting in monitoring the existing portfolio.

Qualifications & Desired Skills:

• Strong understanding of macro credit instruments: cash bonds, CDS, CDX, credit ETFs, and associated derivatives. Solid grasp of pricing, risk, and correlations among and between these instruments and the broader markets.
• Knowledge of the various participants (market makers, hedgers, speculators, etc.), liquidity, and order flow in the credit and options markets.
• An understanding of competitive strategy in trading, including anticipating others’ actions and strategies, and how it influences market behavior.
• Prior hands-on experience in a live trading environment is a strong plus, ideally including credit derivatives.
• Proficiency programming in Python or R and experience building credit analytics tooling, including but not limited to: derivative pricers, risk analysis/sensitivity sheets, pricing aggregators across instruments, and volatility surfaces for credit options.