Do You Have to be a “Finance” Person?
I think to achieve success in IB and PE it helps to have very solid fundamental understanding of finance concepts. Not talking about memorizing formulas, but being able to concisely distill why finance formulas are the way they are.
In the HF world, do you think that still applies? Or do you just need basic finance knowledge with not much upside if you’re truly passionate about finance?
I’m not brilliant, but think I’m above average intelligence. I cant convince myself to think finance is interesting but love the critical thinking and problem solving aspects of the job.
I’m good at my IB job and have been top bucket every year. But feels like an uphill battle since I don’t understand a lot of what I’m doing and have to be scrappy to get to a good end product when it comes to fjnance heavy deliverables like complicated merger math / unique transaction scenarios and structures.
Wondering if HF roles may be a better fit. Also have below average social skills / mild autism.
Sort of but not really? Or it depends. Speaking purely from basic equities here... I think it is more about your ability to figure out what's important really fast, and spending your time there, and to not spin your wheels on nothing / trivial details, whilst simultaneously not building conviction in taking a view. Seeing the story and patterns in the numbers and statements is a learnable skill - can you look at the financials and explain the "basic" story right there without sell side commentary and earnings transcripts and 10ks, but see right away what is happening with cash conversion, inventories, margins, ROIC etc.
Most of that is not really insanely complicated finance stuff. DCF math is DCF math. Multiples is multiples. Can you read a financial statement and pick out some shenanigans and spot weird things. Can you also integrate your model quickly (probably most important for the early stages of ramping the learning curve). Otherwise, I don't think its super complicated stuff at all.
How learnable do you think that trait (what you just described) is?
I would say anyone could do it but to be more diplomatic/ useful, let's just say anyone with a college degree could learn finance finance. Period
I didn't mean finance per se(second para) but more what you talk about in your first paragraph - picking out the key things etc.
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