Interested in everything ... a little help
Going into my Junior year at a non-target school in the North East. I have good grades (3.7) as well as decent experience, WM at a BB bank. One of the heads of an investment group. I network almost every night and have a good network of guys built up at all the major banks in NYC. Everyone tell tells me I am ahead of the curve and that I am doing all the right things to securing an IB position in the following summer. Reading vault guides, M&I 400 guide, and all other tech/ modeling guides.
Here is where the issue comes in:
I am not sure if IB is what I want to do 100%. I have an interest in financial modeling, but I am also obsessed with following the markets and learning about fixed income products and other related market events. The issue I am having is I can't seem to focus on just one thing. Meaning I can't just focus on IB interviewing because I also want to focus on market events and hedge fund related things. I don't want to pigeon whole myself into one area of finance and I am getting overwhelmed with all the information that is out there as applications are going to be due in roughly 4-5 months. I've been networking mostly in the IB area because that is the area that would be the hardest to break into.
To be honest, I also have experience trading and people say I am a great sales man so S&T has interested me as well. But I feel as though because I only have a finance and economics degree the lack of quantitative degree will hurt me. I like looking up and reading about derivatives, CDS, MBS, and following the everyday markets more than I like financial modeling and shit like that.
Would love to know everyone's thoughts. It crazy to think that we have to determine one interest and target that for several year in order to secure a job.
"It crazy to think that we have to determine one interest and target that for several year in order to secure a job."
Funny thing about that is it's not true - internships are temporary for a reason: you're there to figure out whether you want to do this full time after grad. I've seen many people go from IB to S&T or vice versa (especially internship to FT). It's not the most direct route, but it's not uncommon either. So just pick whatever role fits you best and go for it, and figure out over the internship whether it's really for you or not.
I feel your pain had a similar dilemma.
In your case one simple solution is to go do IB and leave after 1-2 years if you don't like it to a hedge fund (closer to markets). But then again that'd probably be a value not a macro fund - which is by the sound of it is what you like.
Another thing I'd do is actually try to trade (you said you had some experience?). You can't "try" M&A on your own but you can try day trading. Do it for a month (as in properly like 8 hours a day) and see if you're still interested. Sorry to say but "I like to follow markets" doesn't mean much. I like to go movies, doesn't mean I'll enjoy making them.
Otherwise I'd ask the following questions: -What am I better positioned for? +does it matter for me much if I end up in BB or smaller shop? (This alone may solve the problem - if you feel you don't stand a chance at ST recruiting but you do at IB and BB matters for you so much... then you know what to do) -What if I end up not liking this area after I work in it? End of world? Where can I move? IB has more options than ST I guess.
Also just so that you know - you keep saying IB is about modelling.. not really. Sure you do modelling at junior levels but that's not the point. You should be excited by the idea of working with big CEOs and helping them build / manage their empires. This is very different from trading securities in secondary markets where your vision is much more short term (how do I figure this buy / sell order TODAY).
Give me a shout if you want to chat or smthing, I was there
IBD gives great exit opps. Go do it and see if you like it. When I graduated from school and worked for a few years as an engineer and figured out it wasn't for me, I had no idea what to do. I wasted so much time pondering all of my options; it wasn't until I said fuck it and just chose a path that I truly made progress on what I really liked. Go jump in, try it out, and if you don't like it you can go do something else. At least then you've checked that option off the list of possibilities, and got some great experience to boot.
You should take an honest look at Credit Risk. My internship was in Credit at a BB, and we did a lot of modeling, followed market trends, and I actually thought it was a great gig. Not where I ended up, but close. Check out FO credit groups, like JPM CIB Credit, CRMA at GS, etc.
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