Analyst WLB at Pods

I’ll watch a lot/read a lot around my coverage. Sometimes doesn’t feel like work but I’ll always catch myself making notes about how this relates to my work, ideas, questions it makes me want to ask IR or management. 
 

I will read a lot of sellside stuff in my off time too, notes I’ve missed because I cover a fuck ton frankly, analysts I don’t usually play attention to but think, “fuck it might as well see what they’re saying”
 

Will try to read across into coverages that impact mine too, so normally I just read sellside stuff here, equity strategy stuff too.

Will do a lot of news scrolling, learning about new policy being introduced and how it can impact coverage (GPT helps a lot at rattling off first order/second order impacts in a rough sense) stuff like that 

feels like work because it always goes back to “how does this affect my coverage” so I’ll usually mind map stuff, but if I’m honest I’ve always been watching and reading this sorta stuff since I was p young so it’s feels natural.

There’s a lot of pnl checking/chart watching too, even when mkt is closed. Also will check bbg prices for commodities and datasets I’ve not caught up on for a while (composite PMI and whatnot)
 

I’m still somewhat junior, analyst for ~3 years and have been in the industry for 4 years. I don’t know if this is “standard” but it’s what I thought I wanted to do to achieve my goals 

I’m on my way out now, but would be running $ this year if I wasn’t. So unfortunately can’t tell you how much of this changes when you become more interfaced with the market and the book.

Life stuff…haha it’s doable. My fiance is very understanding so we make some time every week. I usually have my Friday nights, unless stuff isn’t going well which can happen. I’d also say some of what I do outside of work hours is dedicated, home office type research and some is sat on the sofa with some whisky scrolling on my phone. Can be v spontaneous 

But I guess the point is…there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing with my time. I want to be great at this and being “plugged in” is how I’ve found success over the last 2 years. I have been able to make this my life, and manage everything else around it, that isn’t for everyone.