I met a banker this morning :) (dumb post by HS student....atleast I warned ya)
Well I was walking on 52nd steet towards 7th avenue and I stopped and asked some guy for directions to the 1 train. He told me it was down on 50th and 7th. Since I was basically across the street from UBS and a couple blocks down from Barclays, I asked him if he was a banker, he said yeah, smiled and continued walking. He was kinda short (about 6') and looked intense liked he haven't slept at all last night. You guys might think this is dumb but I thought meeting a banker was pretty cool. He wasn't senior like 30+ years old but he didn't seem like an analyst. I live in the "hood" so seeing someone successful like that was pretty neat. Sorry for wasting your time, I guess I should go study for the SAT's :)
LOL is this for real
Yeah im sorry. Meeting a banker to me is like you meeting Yogi Berra. Sorry for wasting your time.
Wow, just....wow. You actually spent time to write that. By the way, 6' is not short.
Just what we needed, someone to feed the banker egos on this site.... haha
get better role models.
unbelievable. i wish i could burn this thread to the ground
also...you think that worn out mid-level chump stuck in the rat race rushing to the office to save face is successful? So that he can slave away while his group head makes 20x what he does?
get back to the real world...anyone above $150k paygrade is successful (yes, even in new york)
Okay, let's re-write this, then:
"I met someone making $150 THOUSAND dollars per year today! I was AMAZED!!"
This post made my eyes melt off my face.
OK, I agree that "amazed" is too generous of a word. But he did say he was from "the hood". Maybe that means some community college. I'm a senior at cornell and I'd still be impressed with someone who has their shit together and is making $150k. But not amazed....
Maybe once I break in (hopefully, knock on word) I'll become more jaded like you! Let's hope! :)
Dear Buyside,
Are you a high school student? I met this really big dude today and I asked him if he was a HS student. He smiled and said yes, then walked off to class. It was the coolest thing ever. Also, can you give any advice on how to get into a good junior high that can get me into a top tier prep school like Exeter?
Thanks,
Fourth Grade Genius
In all seriousness, you need to let this industry go. When I was your age back in 2000, I wanted to start a dot-com. Look at how that worked out. Finance is a shrinking industry and will continue to get smaller for 5-10 years. By the time we are done, folks working in Treasury at Fortune 500 companies are going to be laughing at investment bankers and having them fetch them a sandwich.
Let's start with standard corporate dealmaking. The armies of VPs and MDs at boutiques and BBs who cater to the M&A and capital-raise needs of the sector they cover. A lot of man hours are needed to process these deals, and this will only become more and more true as our millions of pages of regulations expand and our nation becomes ever more sophisticated over the years, adding to the existing red tape and paper pushing involved. Why will companies stop acquiring, merging, divesting, and raising money?
Trading floors, I'll give you that. There is a definite trend toward computerization and less labor-intensive trading desks, in the vast majority of products, despite traders' arguments otherwise.
Other areas... how about securitization of various ABLs and mortgages? This will return once the calamity and nervousness eventually dies down. It may not get "hot" as it once was, but there is a demand for this junk from investors/lenders and there are plenty of borrowers out there who need the money. I believe the same principles apply here that I mentioned about IBK above.
I'm forgetting lots of other services/products offered by wall street, but this is a good start. Not trying to start an e-fight but I'm curious about IP's specific views.
You are the man. Many people seem to disagree with you. But I gotta agree with what you said.
Jim Rogers would agree with you, too: he urged students to scrap career plans for Wall Street or the City, London’s financial district, and to study agriculture and mining instead. “The power is shifting again from the financial centers to the producers of real goods. The place to be is in commodities, raw materials, natural resources."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Rogers
Remember if you dont get kick ass grade in 12th grade and A levels, as well as excellent SAT scores you will NOT be able to get into a Target University which means most probably never become a Banker.
This should be an inspiration to work harder for you.
Pretty sure he's trolling.
IlliniProgrammer, you are absolutely right. Finance is far too bloated and the inevitable culling of the herd is overdue. This 'trimming of the fat' was part of the market's clearing mechanism in 2008. Unfortunately, Washington stemmed the tide. Tens of thousands of bankers, fund managers, and financial engineers should have got pink slips in 2008, not bonuses, to borrow from Jim Rogers. However, next time it is not clear that Washington and the Federal Reserve can do much to save the financial industry except to the abject disinterest (read: destruction) of the rest of the economy in: "The Financial Crisis: Reloaded" - coming to a country near you. However, I gather, being aware already put you a step or two ahead of your co-workers- you may yet survive.
I'm currently the customer of the week at the Starbucks in that area (51st and Broadway). Talk about successful
I met your mom this morning. She made me breakfast.
Can I ask are there really high school students on this site? From CollegeConfidential?
i met a professional baseball player this morning when i looked in the fucking mirror. sorry to burst your bubble, junior, but you didn't see shit this morning.
Ah, this is great, now i know why people on subway look at me with square eyes - I feel like Stewie Griffin on steroids. Fun post.
ANDDDDDDD
THE BEST PART
the banker was a small business banker at the chase on the corner.
If this kid is for real, you guys fucking pieces of shit. Hey bud, 90% of the people who post on these threads don't even work in banking.
he's an idiot. 50 year downturn since 1912? lol if that were true the U.S. wouldn't exist today.
The finance industry grew the most out of any other industry and is single handedly what made America great and allowed it to be a sole superpower. Even today its still the largest and most important. u don't see the gov't jumping in to save worldcom do you.
Read a fucking book.
Oh and the OP is clearly trolling. no one who thinks bankers are cool in high school even knows what buyside is. he's just probably a shitbanker at a boutique like piper jaffray trying to troll for bankers being cool.
Im not a banker. I know what the buyside is because 1/4 the post in the i-banking section are about getting to the buyside. I also read M&I so I atleast know the basics. Sorry for the post, I tried telling you guys this wasn't a serious post. Why would a banker from a lower tier banker(or any bank) bother posting this..?
I'm an associate working in Private Equity. For $200 I will let you send me an email to my googlemail account and for $1000 I'll even reply. Think of the stories you'll be able to tell!!!
So IP now has his own personal hater following him around?
Here's the data to examine for everyone to look at for themselves:
http://www.nyse.com/financials/1022221393023.html
1929 average daily volume= ~3.5 million
1950 average daily volume= ~2 million.
This was devastating for a lot of broker-dealers. In fact, finance lost half its share of the US GDP between 1929 and 1950. It didn't fully recover its share until 1990:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYUGDPFinancialShare.jpg
We got a bit of a boost from the bailouts which prevented a precipitous drop, but we're still seeing the same long-term trend as 1929 play out after the crash:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-finance-and-insurance-v…
My conservative view is that we shrink back to 5% of GDP from its current 6.5% level over the next ten years, and with the economy at best stagnating into a long-term 1-2% growth funk, that means we've still got a couple more years of layoffs and pay cuts.
Now, someone asked what the mechanisms are behind this. Let's take a look at the mechanisms that caused the 1930s-40s funk and see if they're still valid today. Basically, in 1928, Wall Street had the confidence and trust of the general public. By 1930, it had largely lost it. We went from a laissez-faire financial sector to heavy regulation and the average person on main street holding a general distrust of bankers. So distrust by investors reduced the flow of funds into the sector, and distrust by regulators reduced our ability to take greater risks with the funds that were coming in. As a result, trading book sizes and assets under management decreased and volumes followed.
My view is that we're seeing a milder form of this today. Basel III and Dodd-Frank are a lot more modest than Glass-Steagall. And a lot of the people I talk to these days- even reasonably wealthy and educated folks outside the financial industry- think that the stock market is a ponzi scheme.
I normally look at things from a technical perspective and seeing an overextension of credit in the 1920s and a huge increase in the cost of resources preceding the crash is enough for me to conclude that there's a very strong chance we'll see a significant decline in the size of the industry, but folks wanted the mechanisms by which the industry will continue shrinking and I offered them.
In terms of M&A activity, that also slowed down dramatically after the 1920s. We saw a few mergers in the 60s, picking up with the railroad mergers of the '70s and finally got back up to 1920s levels with the 80s LBO/merger boom. Some of it had to do with more regulation, but a lot of it also had to do with a lot of horizontal and vertical integration in the decades leading up to the crash.
We're in the midst of a long-term transition towards more regulation in the economy, and the AT&T merger shows what's going on. We're starting to run out of companies to merge and it's getting to the point where the Herfindahl Index is getting well above levels that even fairly a neoliberal justice department can tolerate. If anyone who isn't too far right of Reagan winds up in the White House in 2016, antitrust will mean something and we can expect to see more deals like this get nixed.
So I don't think we're going to see 40% unemployment in the financial sector like we saw in the 1930s, but to assume that finance will keep growing as a sector above historical norms with maxed-out consumers, mistrustful investors, hostile regulators, and plenty of other headwinds is maybe a little too optimistic.
??
You think too much. Kill your brain cells by watching a couple of episodes of Jerzey Shore and please come back down to our level.
IP, how do you convince yourself not to perform Japanese samurai ritual suicide on yourself? You're the biggest buzz-kill I've ever met online.
LOL
If money is not a huge priority in life, you can look at the economic chaos and smile and shrug. But if money IS a huge priority, life is going to suck for the next 5-10 years, regardless of your industry. So my advice to college students is curb your ambitions, learn to take as much joy in your friends as your material possessions, and also learn to enjoy saving more than spending.
We are incredibly blessed to work in a high-paying industry in a first-world country, but a lot of bankers and traders I know are less happy than 40-year old subsistence farmers in Mexico. We have to learn to let our fears and jealousies go and be happy we have a roof over our heads, food on the table, and safety nets like brokerage accounts, savings accounts, and insurance. The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is probably the luckiest guy in the world- having anything he could ever think of but only really wanting a Dairy Queen ice cream with his grandkids, but if we get our priorities straight and save money like crazy, we can come pretty close.
You don't mess with IP when it comes to talking about financial ruin.
Haha HPM, it's not financial ruin, just realism. We had an 80-year crash three years ago and looking at historical norms, finance does have some more room to shrink. I'm trying to be a lot more conservative on the pullback than long-term trends imply, but we just came off a 28-year consumer debt binge with 55% peak to bottom crash, the producers and workers who are bringing in cash- as well as the pols who print it- hate wall street, and it just makes sense that we're going to see a fairly significant long-term pullback.
I don't think this is all that radical or depressing- it's nowhere near as scary as the crash of 2008 and we'll trudge through this, too.
Dont feel bad kid... I used to want to be a cop and when I met with a cop it was like the coolest thing... what these people on here lack is a sense of appreciation for what they are doing/pretending to be doing ... you have aspirations and as long as you stay insanely committed to them they will leave your dreams and become your reality... its working for me
I disagree with alot of what IP says generally, but I agree that it is not insane to think a protracted down-turn in the finance industry may be in its early stages. It's pretty simple...we went through a 40 year run-up in leverage. The financial service industry basically made money providing that leverage and riding the wave of higher asset prices. Nobody can increase borrowing forever unless incomes are also rising to make the debt service feasible...they arent and for most people havent been for quite some time. So a de-leveraging is necessary and that takes time.
Also, it is hardly unprecedented for industries to decline over many decades. It is worth noting that prior to the Depression Utility companies were lucrative, considered sexy and the CEOs were like the Bill gates-types of their day. Through a combination of regulation, commoditization of the technology, and partial nationalization the industry declined for at least 50 straight years more or less in a straight line. Obviously there are major differences, but finance is not some magic industry that cannot have a secular decline.
Heh. OP's post is just...magical.
I like how the discussion went from joke to serious discussion on the state of the finance industry.
Overall, I agree. Financial sector hasn't been hit hard enough yet. Since 2008, the only industry that has been doing well (paying out record bonuses year after year in the worst economy since the Great Depression...seriously...) is financial services. Yet the rest of the economy burns. Until now...
Think about it, we never really fixed any of the issues form back in 2008. Since then, banks have more unstable and larger, unemployment has remained persistently high, job growth has yet to normalize (if ever), the housing market never stabilized, the government just lost AAA credit rating, policy makers are useless and blaming opposing political parties, student debt is about implode etc etc you get the point. The only positve news is that companies are sitting on more cash than before and people are more productive (because they are working harder for less pay). But they're not spending it because of double-dip fears. And that decision might prove to be prudent.
I feel bad for all those Harvard/Wharton MBAs. They will need to find other ndustries to break into and make less money. Bless their hearts, they work so hard. They don't deserve that.
just because the industry is in decline doesnt mean you cant make alot of money, it just means it will be harder. People have built banking dynasties and made fortunes trading for thousands of years, it is not unique to the last 30 year run of insane, unsustainable leverage. In the last 30 years it was just too easy...when I was younger I worked at a now defunct/acquired bond dealership and basically everyone who worked there over the age of 35 was objectively "rich" regardless of level of inteligence or work ethic....basically you just had to not be an asshole so you didnt lose your job and you became a multi-millionaire. Those days are probably over, but that doesnt mean the best and most hard-working in the industry won't continue to do very very well. This is where I diverge from the doomsaying of Illini Programmer...even a very bad industry-specific recession that lasts many years does not neccesarily mean it is a smart move to give up and go become a farmer. It just means you are going to have to work for it....boo hoo.
you must be from the hood to think 6' is short....
Also OP is you are really this naive that you think meeting a banker was really really cool. I suggest you should read the FAQs , as well as previous threads here on WSO to get a better understanding of the industry. Also you should be looking and researching about Consultancy jobs, F-500 jobs and entrepreneurship.
Getting in a very good university is the key, that should be your No. 1 priority at this moment. You should also understand that working/studying for 7-8 hrs a day + doing extracurricular activities for the rest of the time and doing t consistently is also very important.
6' is actually pretty short by Troll standards....
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troll Am I trolling? Why are some people here so quick to call someone a troll, it's like their only purpose on the site. Why do people post here when it has nothing to do with the topic? I told you before you even read the thread it was a silly post by a HS student, and if I'm a troll, why are you feeding me? As BlackFinancier would say, "troll successful". Sorry for the mini rant, IDK why I let the troll win -_- .
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