At what point in your life did you get interested in finance?
I've been active on this site for a few months now. It is clear that the demographic range is large in a myriad of senses. Ever so often there is a college freshman or the occasional high school student posting questions about recruiting, interviews, targets, etc. I always found those posts surprising and an oddity.
There is nothing wrong with getting interesting in something early, it probably helps a lot going forward. It is clear many of them don't know the first thing about the positions they inquire about beyond a few acronyms and it "possibly" compensates generously. I'm guessing those kids generally have family members that work in the industry or a similar industry (accounting, audting, etc.) in some capacity. I find it hard to believe a high school student or freshman could know anything about these industries or actively researched them otherwise. It's a little too disturbing.
For me personally, I really got interested in the finance industry in general during the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college. That's when I really started following the markets and learning the more technical side of it. Before that, I personally knew little to nothing.
When did you become interested?
Some point after I already had a finance job...a few weeks/months into it.
Second year of undergraduate studies. Got very interested in IB, PE, VC, ER and MC during my MSF though. Initially, during undergrad I got interested because of the money and prestige. During my MSF I learned to love the industry.
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When I first convinced my dad to buy 500 dollars of stock in EB games back in 2002.
When I saw Wall Street.
Considering you misspelled "finance" in the title of your post, you clearly are not in finance (or won't be for very long....). Triple check your work son!!!
That being said, I had my first taste of finance during my senior year in high school and always knew I was better with numbers than with words. Went to school for business, focused on finance, wanted to do IB which ended up to working out for a variety of reasons (thank god) and went straight to the buy side.
Short answer, senior year in high school.
9th grade after reading Security Analysis. It was the first book I read on investing that actually made a lick of sense, though I agreed more with Graham's framework for investing than with his implementation of it.
I find it remarkable that people go off to college and choose a business major without having any idea what they're interested in.
I'll let you know when it happens.
Please do.
4th grade a good family friend who is a hedgefund manager gave me how to make money in stocks and i read it and became interested. Since then its been spontaneous and now I am a senior in highschool and going to activly pursue it through college unless i find something else to do that is as interesting
Inside the womb when I heard a cash register open.
At 13, after googling "careers that use Economics." I then saw something like "I-Banking at Goldman Sachs is the pinnacle of existence" and that was my goal through high school. Needless to say once the, uh, kimono was opened, I decided that maybe another firm would be better.
Early junior year in college. I had bounced around with a few majors first, but really enjoyed my introduction to finance course. From there, it took some time to really find what exactly I wanted to do, as friends of mine were pretty into trading or private wealth management but I didn't really think that I fit well into those 2 categories.
I didn't know what an investment bank was until September 2008, when my buddy came up to me on locust walk and said "it's all gone. All of it. Merrill is fucked!" - I replied "What is Merrill?" And that prompted me to understand and try to figure out the financial world. Lo and behold, I now work in PE. Funny looking back on it now...
When I was 6 and went into my parent's office and saw a Bloomberg terminal for the first time...and then sat in a luxury box at Shea with their corporate tickets. Hooked...
i've wanted to be an investment banker since i was 7 years old.
seriously though, i think it was probably when i learned that the same process thats used to describe the movement of particles is also used to model the movement of stock prices...and then decided to explore what this whole finance thing was all about
first semester at a state school. no one there was motivated or anything. realized i could do better and wanted a better life for myself and my (future) family. transferred out and eventually got a great job
Junior year of high school. The entire financial world was on the brink of collapse and it completely fascinated me. I used to go see the CFO of my school John Tuke to ask him about the markets etc. He really played a massive role in encouraging me to enter the field, my first major mentor really.
Watching Wall Street etc contributed to it, but that was the start.
In early 2009, looking at how to invest "real" money. This was after undergrad in electrical engineering. Worked on my MBA and peaked my interest even more. Hard part now is how, at 27, do I transition into a role in the industry?
since high school
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