How To Kick Ass On Wall Street

Andy Kessler, an author, investment banker, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager has a new E-book called "How To Kick Ass On Wall Street." It's only $4.99.

He wrote the book for prospective monkeys and has some interesting advice:

If you get assigned a mentor, you should drop them immediately. They’ll be worthless. Anyone given the task of being a mentor is someone who is an underachiever that management figures has extra time on their hands with nothing better to do than to mentor newbies. You want an underachiever as a mentor? I didn’t think so.

While it seems like much of the stuff he writes about you can learn from your daily fill of WSO, for $4.99 it might be a decent purchase for prospective monkeys.
Will you buy the book?

The book is modeled after ten things you need to understand:

1. Figure Out The Meritocracy
2. Make A Good First Impression
3. Understand The Big Picture
4. Find the Right Role
5. Get A Mentor
6. Lock Down Clients
7. Be A Hero
8. Guard Your Reputation
9. Get Paid
10. Read, Read, Read

 
David Aames][quote=happypantsmcgee:
If dude was really kicking ass on Wall Street, would he write a book like this?
Rosenbaum is kicking ass and wrote a book.
http://www.amazon.com/Investment-Banking-Valuation-Leveraged-Acquisitio…] Yea, he wrote a book (a textbook really) on how to do what he was actually kicking ass at doing. Not really a fair comparison.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

No offense, but the quote that is given is completely wrong. That alone makes me not want to buy this book. I have had mentors that were some of the most brilliant minds in the field. They trained me well so I could ease the workflow for them. They were the best at what they did and wanted me to succeed. Also that book cover looks like something that is poorly made using microsoft paint.

 
ValueInvesting:
No offense, but the quote that is given is completely wrong. That alone makes me not want to buy this book. I have had mentors that were some of the most brilliant minds in the field. They trained me well so I could ease the workflow for them. They were the best at what they did and wanted me to succeed. Also that book cover looks like something that is poorly made using microsoft paint.

Unless I'm reading that quote wrong, he is not saying don't find a mentor. He is saying don't accept the mentor that your company arbitrarily assigns to you (with the implication being that you should go find one on your own).

Hi, Eric Stratton, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you.
 
Best Response

I read this pretty quickly in just one sitting. Not sure how long it would actually be ‘in print’ but honestly I have read Esquire articles that were longer. If you can ‘borrow’ it for free on your Kindle like I did, I might be worth the time, but about 80% of the meat was mentioned at the Business Insider Link.

  • Rather disorganized in that it does not break out what specifically applies to banking, trading, and sales. For example, it talks quite a bit about being invited to happy hours by senior colleagues. My impression is that not many bankers will be leaving the office until happy hour is long over. Unless, I suppose, it’s for one of the ‘Late Night Happy Hours’ that a lot of places run on off-peak nights from 11-2am.

  • He spends a significant portion of time talking about the history of Wall Street and what Wall Street people actually do. If his audience is meant to be someone like me (have a job at a BB and starting in a few months) I would expect the reader to already know most of that. Even if the reader does not know, who cares? This book is supposed to help succeed, not remind us that in 1792 a group of brokers met under a Buttonwood tree……

  • About half way through he spends several pages differentiating traders from bankers from salespeople. I reiterate my previous point. We, as the reader, already know this shit.

  • About 2/3 of the way through, he give a nice synopsis of the Facebook IPO debacle with some nice insight from an insider.

  • He talks a lot about ‘bringing in clients’ and other things that seem more specific to senior bankers and not an associate in his first couple of years.

  • His Read, Read, Read piece is somewhat common sense. He basically mentions reading the WSJ and NYT business section every day and Forbes / Bloomberg Business Week on a regular basis. He did not mention the FT or the Economist, which I personally prefer over the above mentioned (and are the only publications I subscribe to). Also recommended were industry trade magazines for whatever group you are in as well as blogs like The Big Picture, ZeroHedge, and a few others.

  • The last chapter is his personal manifesto about Wall Street’s past and future. While it applied very little to the title of the book, it was actually very interesting and I appreciated his insight into how government intervention can catastrophically underpin market efficiency.

All in all, probably not worth the time, but it was an enjoyable way to kill an hour in an otherwise uneventful summer afternoon.

 

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