Hi, I'm a rising sophomore at a semi-target in the north east. I have a 3.5 GPA working towards a finance/history major I have a couple of extracurriculars, but nothing that I'd say is noteworthy. Do I have a chance at getting a sophomore internship in ER at a BB for next summer? Am I much better off going for a smaller bank? I've been trying to find a direction for myself lately and it seems as though I have the most interest in ER, but I still have a lot to learn about it.

So I was just extended my first job offer since graduating.

It's a long term temp position in the FX Operations department. I'll be working in the account management area.

Nothing to glamorous, but I am indeed happy to be employed and at least its in finance.

I have other things still in the works for some other ideal job opportunities that I will still pursue. Ideally I would like to end up in equity research or IB.

With that in mind, how can I go about using this position in operations as a stepping stone to reach my ultimate goals.

If I have been in contact with somebody in IB there, can I inform them and offer to stay late and help? Ask if I can shadow when I'm done with my hours?

If the ultimate goal is to be a PM, which path should one take when starting right out of undergrad? Post MBA? What are the differences in their career progression? And how do the tasks differ as an entry level employee?

Don't have access to Bloomberg or any other paid subscription services, so was wondering if anyone knows any free sites where you can find public companies WACC?

Wikiwealth does it, but their method of calculation doesnt seem the most accurate.

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Hey all,

Just a question to all you ER guys for an upcoming interview I have. I wanted to know if it is appropriate to pitch a pink sheet stock as a sell in an ER interview and if that's seen as the equivalent of pitching something cliche like apple.

Thanks

How many stocks is reasonable for an ER associate to cover? I'm currently evaluating an opportunity where I will work for one senior analyst who covers around 16 stocks (large caps) and another analyst junior to him (sort of a VP-level guy) who covers another 8 (small caps). I will be working for both of them, so my coverage could be 24 stocks. Is that manageable for a new research associate or will I be slammed for the first few months getting up to speed?

Just landed a research role offer at a financial information provider (an UK firm), mainly covering HF/MF/OTC. So will this position be helpful in making the shift to sell-side few years down the road, and after acquiring the MBA? Thank you.

p.s. I just graduated from undergrad. in Nov 2012 and currently on the track pursuing the CFA as well (June 2013 L2).

Say you cover Microsoft and your fundamental analysis gives a TP of $XX. But with general capital rotation into equities you are now within a few % of that TP, without any material change or catalyst to MSFT itself to justify the stock price appreciation. How do you address this? Go neutral? Find a way to up the TP?

I am a Seeking Alpha super star. My average article gets 17,000 page views and I get paid $170.00 for 2-3 pages of work. It is not uncommon for me to receive comments from 100+ people thanking me for my insight.

If my main goal is to obtain a more legitimate ER internship, what is the best way I can make use of my talent?

1) Keep doing what I'm doing. I currently work for a prop trading and write for their Seeking Alpha account. The plus side is I get to write "Equity Research Intern" on my resume. The downside is that there are about a dozen other interns that do what I do and even though my name is in the byline of all my articles, it will be difficult to prove that most of our followers are a direct result of my work.

I would imagine a decent way to prepare for getting into equity research is to start following a specific industry in detail.

How general/specific should I be putting my focus into?
and also, what are the so-called "safe options" that most people will follow?

obviously its best if the industry that you follow is in line with the industry group in which your interview is lined up with, but you won't be able to know that beforehand.

what industries do you guys focus on?? and how did you go about choosing it? just out of interest? or because you felt that it is a more useful industry to follow?

My interests lie on following entertainment industry (online gambling), aerospace, airlines, telecommunications,mobile phones etc.

Hello everyone,

So I have a phone screen with Fidelity coming up tomorrow, not with an HR but with an analyst instead. If anyone who had experience having an interview with them PM me or post here about their interview experiences that would be great. I have seen a couple of historical posts about people's final rounds but haven't heard much about the questions they ask in the phone screen, especially since I'm talking to an analyst not HR.

Thanks!

I'm quite interested in the buy-side of Wall Street however, my issue is that I have a low GPA (3.05). Granted I still have a year to improve it and I go to the most prestigious school in Canada. However, which realm of finance would be least picky about GPAs?

Equity Research, S&T, Private Banking, Asset Management, etc.

Hopefully I could get some feedback. Feel free to rank accordingly. I have a passion for markets and I would love to be involved in one of these fields.

Created this same thread last year and it had a good response so thought it would be helpful to do it again. I get a sense that the street was down across the board this year but all of the focus is on IBD and not ER or S&T so there's very few data points. It's helpful to collect as much comp info as possible to understand the health of our business and also for people to know whether they're fairly compensated. Obviously privacy/anonymity is important here but fill out something generic if you don't mind, as I have done below.

Firm Type: MM (Jefferies/RBC/Stifel)
Location: NYC
Role: 3rd/4th Year ER Associate
Base: 90k (unchanged, no raise)
Bonus: 50k cash (flat Y/Y)

Purely hypothetical at this point.

Here's my situation: I'm currently working full time at a glorified back office job that offers little room for growth and certainly not a path to get me to where I ultimately want to be (that would be buy side equity research). I only accepted this offer because I was coming from a non-target, pickings were slim, and I was running out of options financially. I've been here a little over three years. Don't want to get into details but there is 0 opportunity to stay here and do the sort of work I want to be doing. Since I've been here my finances have gotten much better and I've passed the first two levels of the CFA exam.

Sorry if the question sound noobish to you. Since my experience is not qualified for applying to BBs, I've been looking to join an ER boutique in Hong Kong. After some in-depth research, I realized most of these shops don't even practice fundamental research. Instead, they rely on extensive technical analyses and judgments. So is the fundamental/technical preference geographical or what? How can I find out more fundamental research shops in the region (Hong Kong)? Thanks

Are traders a good source of information or are traders looking for info from the analyst?

I did a search before and didn't find much on Motley Fool...wanted to hear people's opinion on the company for a summer internship and how other banks might view an internship here. Now, before most of you start trashing the company I really want an objective perspective because I feel like most of the readers of this forum have the "BB or die" kind of attitude anyway. This is their investment internship program and I would definitely be involved in looking at companies and doing some fundamental analysis to an extent, but I'm eventually looking to move onto buy-side research at a fund.

I've submitted my resume and work sample to couple boutiques (GMP, veritas, & cormark) last friday, does anyone have any experience in how long does it take to hear back from them? I know that most analysts are heading into the earning season recently, would that slow things a bit too? Thanks!

Just finished putting it together after couple days of typesetting work. Please, critiques are welcome :)

I'm fairly new to the world of sell side research (less than 5 years as an analyst), and I had my first major blow up in 2012. Wanted to walk through the perspective from the sell-side.

Background

I have a pretty good read on one of my companies and have been able to call it long or short for awhile. Data points were again particularly negative on the quarter. I pushed multiple clients short (probably something like 5m-10m shares combined) into the close of the quarter. On my earnings preview my sales traders pushed an additional few hundred k short.

I would like to ask which program do you guys use for designing the report layout. Thanks!

As said, does anyone here have a membership to the Value Investors Club?

Hello Monkeys, I just got invited to GS final round for global investment research (summer analyst). Has anyone here been through this process / can tell me what to expect? I will obviously have some stocks ready to pitch (long and short), but what other technical questions might they throw at me. Any advice is useful. Feel free to PM me as well if you dont want to post.