The London Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse are traditionally the global stockexchanges which equities are traded on. However, buyers and sellers are increasingly trading equities anonymously and privately in so called 'darkpools' in order to avoid influencing the price of stocks with large buy and sell orders.

Various different entities including major banks, brokerage houses, agency traders, asset management firms and hedge funds are active in the field ofequities recruitment.

The role of the equities salesperson is to liaise with clients - whether they are rich individuals, pension funds or other institutional investors –and to advise them when to buy or when to sell particular stocks.

Salespeople then liaise with equities traders who execute the trade on behalf of the client; at their most simplistic, traders act as market makers. Itis the job of the market makers to quote clientsbuy and sell prices for particular stocks (depending on the client's preference), whilst making moneyfrom the bid-offer spread (the difference between the price they buy the stock at and the price at which they sell it the stock on to the client).

Trading cash or simple equity products electronically through automated trading systems matching buyers and sellers has now taken the place of humantrading. Equally, algorithmic trading systems employing mathematical formulae dictating the best investment strategy now account for a large proportionof equities trades. Nevertheless, there remains a need for human intervention. For example, execution traders are needed when large so-called blocktrades are being placed to break the trades up into smaller and more manageable chunks in order to achieve the best price in the market.

Sales traders are a kind of hybrid between salespeople and traders - they recommend products to clients and then execute the trades resulting fromtheir recommendations.

Salespeople are needed to sell electronic trading capabilities, as well as selling equities themselves. Banks, for example, employ individuals to findclients for their direct market access (DMA), or electronic trading systems.

Jobs in equities are also available for IT programmers, quants, and equity researchers who support an organisation's equity sales and tradingcapability.