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Historically, equities have been traded on big international stock exchanges, like the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Shanghai Stock Exchange or Deutsche Börse. At present, while they are still traded there, a growing amount of equities trading is now taking place off-exchanges, in so-called "dark pools." This is because buyers and sellers of equities often prefer to trade anonymously and privately to avoid influencing the price of stocks with large orders to buy or sell.

Many different companies recruit equities staff, including large international banks, brokerage houses, agency traders, asset management firms and hedge funds.

The equities salesperson's job is to keep in contact with and win clients, whether they are rich private individuals, pension funds or other institutional investors, and to advise them on when they should buy or sell particular stocks.

Salespeople then get in contact with equities traders who carry out the trade on behalf of the client. In the simplest sense, traders act as market makers. Market makers quote clients both buy and sell prices for any stocks the client is interested in, while making a profit from the bid-offer spread. This is the difference between the price at which they buy the stock and the price at which they sell it to the client.

Trading cash or simple equity products usually now takes place electronically with automatic trading systems matching buyers and sellers. A large number of equities trades are now determined by algorithmic trading systems which use mathematical formulae dictating the best investment strategy. Despite all these systems, there is still a need for human intelligence. When large block trades are being placed, for example, execution traders may need to break these trades up into smaller and more manageable chunks to get the best price available in the market.

Sales traders working in equities are really a hybrid between salespeople and traders. This is because they first recommend products to their clients and then continue to execute the trades resulting from that advice.

Salespeople are also needed to sell electronic trading capabilities. Banks, for example, hire individuals to pitch to clients for their direct market access (DMA), or electronic trading systems.

Jobs in equities can also be for IT programmers, quants and equity researchers, all of whom may be required to support an organization's equity sales and trading capability.