Why are you guys still interested in markets?
I don't really go on campuses anymore representing my banks at banking fairs, so for the last 2 years I have had little contact with undergrads etc...
I interviewed about 4 potential juniors recently, then decided against hiring someone without a client base. The only thing I really saw was that the guys 1) either just got laid off, or 2) could not find a single job; it was more a: "there is a job in banking, will try and get it even though i don't know about it". Brilliant people, with eye watering CVs; just an absolute shocker that they were still unemployed.
Given the massive hiring freeze, the over-bloated effectives in equities and fixed income, and the general beating banks have been taking. What makes you keep on going? The massive base salaries banks seem to pay? Or are you still hoping to get a nice bonus at some point? What's the carrot?
I'd be curious to know about people that are interested in markets strictly speaking, no bankers. Bankers are messed up in their own ways.
(And if you are still trying, keep looking, especially away from the bulge brackets; there are a few jobs out there, and if you are good you'll get it. Best of luck, because what I have seen from my friends being laid off etc... It's not a fun time to be looking for just any jobs in equity, and to a lesser extent in fixed income [kick ass year in FI, yet they are still letting people go...])
For a junior guy, finance is
For a junior guy, finance is still one of the highest salaries straight out of undergrad so that might have something to do with it. ANd for a certain person, there are very few jobs like trading in terms of intellectual stimulation and culture. But the carrot is def smaller, and it does have an effect on the job because if your upside is your salary, you are going to take just enough risk to not get fired. It used to be that as a trader you were long that option, if your large bets paid off you got a big bonus, if they didnt you got 0 or got laid off. But now if you swing the bat there really is only the laid off if it goes wrong path, so now traders are short that option.
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Some of my friends who did
Some of my friends who did banking internships for their sophomore summers say they couldn't handle the hours/work in IBD. That was their main driver toward S&T.
"A man generally has two reasons for doing anything. One that sounds good, and the real one." - J.P. Morgan
BTbanker: Some of my friends
Some of my friends who did banking internships for their sophomore summers say they couldn't handle the hours/work in IBD. That was their main driver toward S&T.
I'll be honest that is part of the reason I am avoiding IB. I want to get into HF eventually and for a while I was aiming for the IB side but I don't want to kill myself in IB for two years when I could be doing S&T and do HF just as easily.
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I've always been interested
I've always been interested in companies, not markets per se. Investing in individual companies is pretty much the only thing I'm interested in besides golf and tennis. It's more like a hobby that pays well.
Most of my friends during undergrad had no idea what they wanted to do in the business world and picked banking or asset management mainly because that's what everyone else was doing. I think that's the case for most people.
All I care about in life is accumulating bananas
Banking's about as
Banking's about as interesting and intellectually stimulating as a prolapsed rectum.
Research positions are few and far between.
Quant roles require too much education and/or are too focused on one thing.
Most corporate finance roles, at least at the entry level are really just glorified accounting roles.
For those of us interested in finance, there's not exactly a whole lot of options left.
I'm in sell side research,
I'm in sell side research, but I'll chime in. I interned at a BB and got a FT offer for IBD, but moved to research.
Deal flow in this environment is very uneven; you could easily be going into post-analyst recruiting without a major deal under your belt. And PE isn't what it used to be. I didn't really want a career in private equity; having to source deals at the senior level sounded miserable. If you remove the PE carrot, why beat yourself with the stick of an IBD analyst program?
IBD is honestly boring. You are not really exposed to the markets. You are not really learning about businesses. You are becoming a very efficient modeler with great presentation skills. Based on my experience, most modeling done in IBD (and research, for that matter) is overkill for investing. Nobody runs a DCF and finds a company undervalued by 30%. Your assumptions matter much more than the details of your model.
Investing is probably the one thing I enjoy day to day. And research is a reasonably proxy for it, and provides an exit to mutual funds / hedge funds in the future. I also have the ability to time the job market, since I am not in a 2 year program.
As for why finance? I grew up poor. And it sucked. I never want to be poor again. I want to be able to send my kid to Exeter / Andover. Finance is one of the very few remaining roads to the upper class. Keep in mind I am generalizing:
Medicine is a long path. You don't start making money until you are 30ish, and have mountains of debt. Remember the post "I have no money"? Every doctor is in a worse situation than that. And with government cost controls coming to healthcare and the rise Managed Care Organizations like Kaiser, I am not optimistic about physician salaries in the long term.
Law can be good, if you ace the LSAT and get into a top 14 school, then do well on their exams (graded seemingly at random). Even then, you still run the risk of failing to make partner - at that point, you are like a laid off banking VP. The legal market is arguably even more over-saturated than finance.
There isn't much else. Engineering salaries level off fairly early, and older engineers often are seen as less valuable than fresh grads. I am quite frankly not sure I could pass the actuarial exams. Accounting can be good, but you work nearly the same hours as finance but for less money; I also don't find the work interesting. Consulting is a good path, but I think I would hate the work unless I was in some specialty practice group (e.g. McKinsey's finance consulting group).
For me most of it is about
For me most of it is about landing a job (something connected to the markets; broker/trader etc.) that I'm truly interested in and not settling for something safe. I would hate to have dragged my sorry ass to a corporate office to work on some TPS reports for 15 years, and then look back and knew I never took a risk on something better.
Also, if one takes a job in a more corporate role they are likely to have their wages permanently depressed for their entire career based arbitrarily on them having started working in a weak economy. Maybe if one holds out for a role with a BB or market-maker, even if it's not ideal, they could eventually recoup some losses by way of bonuses or future job-advancement. (I graduated Ugrad in september 2008 and Bschool summer 2012, so if I sound scorned of my generation's career prospects, well...)
The hours of IBD suck. One of
The hours of IBD suck. One of the biggest attractions is that you eat what you kill, Even though there is virtually no job security, and algos are slowly taking away seats. There is still the golden carrot of a couple good years setting you up for the rest of your life.
+1 for West Coast rainmarker.
+1 for West Coast rainmarker.
After you get your PE job, IBD is not interesting or intellectually stimulating at all (prior to getting your PE job you can convince yourself to keep cranking and absorbing because you need things to talk about during your interviews). You will not learn anything about business. CEOs will not be calling you.
I was too risk averse for S&T, wasn't very interested in Research, so narrowed it down to IBD and Consulting. I, like many others, didn't really know what I wanted to do so I said, hell, let's do Banking --> PE.
Is PE the end all, be all? No. Am I even sure it's what I want to do long term? I have no idea. In retrospect, if I could go back and do it all again, I would go to Consulting assuming it's MBB.
How depressing - If I narrow
How depressing -
If I narrow it down correctly in essence what you guys are saying is:
IBD is too intense, and jobs in PE are scarce and not really motivating to get to anymore. The rest of the jobs out there are not paid properly, and not challenging enough; so fall back on markets hoping that you will scrap one or two decent bonuses before it all falls down to hell.
Glad that the mood in college is as positive as on a UBS trading floor a couple of months ago...
I'm just going to address
I'm just going to address your last post as someone who did IBD to PE. I wouldn't say IBD is "intense". I don't think long hours are considered intense when a good 1/3 of those hours are downtime and you're surfing dealbreaker or google news.
As for PE, I think it's as close to a perfect job as I could hope for. Depends on the fund, team, investment strategy, culture, etc. but even if my PE job paid like a normal industry job I would still love it.
Not sure the point of your posts but all jobs have shitty aspects to them. That's why they're called jobs and thats why people pay you to do it.
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SanityCheck: I'm just going
I'm just going to address your last post as someone who did IBD to PE. I wouldn't say IBD is "intense". I don't think long hours are considered intense when a good 1/3 of those hours are downtime and you're surfing dealbreaker or google news.
As for PE, I think it's as close to a perfect job as I could hope for. Depends on the fund, team, investment strategy, culture, etc. but even if my PE job paid like a normal industry job I would still love it.
Not sure the point of your posts but all jobs have shitty aspects to them. That's why they're called jobs and thats why people pay you to do it.
The point is mainly: what's the mood for market on college campuses. I am not too worried about M&A as there are still millions of people wanting to work in that field... Given the recent massive layoffs in my field, doughnut bonuses, etc... What drives students to try and get a job in markets.
(M&A has suffered as well, but exit opps are still there, and even if you want to keep doing that job advisory still need a lot of people)
I thought about the above a
I thought about the above a lot. I find research to be really interesting, and hopefully to be able to run a hedge fund later on in life. Very few positions such as research or S&T require you to have such an interest and master of what's going on throughout the world.
It's that or working for some government agency and the like (that is paid well, as well).
Disjoint: IBD is too
IBD is too intense.
Not really.
The complete opposite actually. That's the problem.
Agree with the rest though.
my thoughts/situation
my thoughts/situation exactly... except I'm in trading. A lot of people in the industry still claim that trading is going to come back and we are in a good position starting in the bottom of the cycle blah blah... Does anyone actually think this? Can trading at banks recover from Basel 3 and Dodd Frank and will regulation ever lighten up?
confused23: my
kimbo: confused23: my
I help people with the tough situation of not knowing how to respond to emails.
You don't have to work at a
I am an Electrical
Mps721
cuz wall street is boss as
Mps721: I am an Electrical
I help people with the tough situation of not knowing how to respond to emails.
I think the BB--> PE route is
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
digikc94: cuz wall street is
I hate victims who respect their executioners
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kyleyboy: kimbo: confused
I really can't explain why...
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ST
kyleyboy: BTbanker: Some of
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DontMakeMeShortYou: kyleybo
DontMakeMeShortYou: kyleybo
I help people with the tough situation of not knowing how to respond to emails.
DontMakeMeShortYou: Sorry to
streetwannabe: I agree with
Disjoint, I am a 2nd year in
George
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
SanityCheck: I'm just going
I just like the culture and
I don't accept sacrifices and I don't make them. ... If ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of the other, there better be no trade at all. A trade by which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.
cacambo: Disjoint, I am a 2nd
Traders are like hunters.
Green Goat: Traders are like
mxc: DontMakeMeShortYou: So
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Ok, I yield. Perhaps it's
Can't believe no one has said
Frank Sinatra - "Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy."
mxc: Ok, I yield. Perhaps
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someone on here said before
If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough.
"There are two types of people in this world: People who say they pee in the shower, and dirty fucking liars."-Louis C.K.
wolverine19x89: someone on
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then what's one of the
If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough.
"There are two types of people in this world: People who say they pee in the shower, and dirty fucking liars."-Louis C.K.
wolverine19x89: then what's
Well then I guess my question
If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough.
"There are two types of people in this world: People who say they pee in the shower, and dirty fucking liars."-Louis C.K.
wolverine19x89: Well then I
See my WSO Blog
wolverine19x89: Well then I
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