Big words are for amateurs

Hello my fellow monkeys,

In light of being promoted early at my fund it will now be more legitimised to intervene and voice my opinion while the analysts or other teams present their investment memos. As now I am not the one at the bottom of the pole I get to lay back on the conference room leather chair, tent my fingers slowly in a manner similar to Angela Merkel or Mr Burns and as I adjust my voice to a pitch slightly lower than my natural voice (see Elizabeth Holmes), slightly frown my eyebrows while I voice my concerns over the investment currently being presented using fancy words such as: ergo (instead of "therefore"), modicum (instead of "small quantity") or quantum (instead of "the amount of x"), falsely believing that it adds credibility to my arguments.

What fancy words do you fellow monkeys like to occasionally include in your vocabulary that you once heard a partner at your previous job use or some chap at Sohn Conference 2014 to sound smarter while you could totally have used a plain english word yet you did want to slightly stroke your ego the moment you said it because you thought it may make you sound slightly more well read that you actually are?

46 Comments
 

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 

My boss uses, "what I struggle with" instead of "I don't like this". "...leading to more productive outcomes" instead of "get shit done faster" “That's what I'm saying" instead of "I don't understand what the fuck you're saying but I'm going to agree to make it seem like I give a shit. Just do what I want you to." “My 104 ft Hatteras" instead of "my micropenis". All classics.

 

i like the word superfluous - as in, your post is superfluous in the unnecessary sense of the word.

Thank you for your interest in the 2020 Investment Banking Full-time Analyst Programme (London) at JPMorgan Chase. After a thorough review of your application, we regret to inform you that we are unable to move forward with your candidacy at this time.
 

Maybe not quite big words, but anytime someone says there's "no there there" I write them off forever. Not a fan of corporate jargon generally, but somehow that particular one makes me cringe so hard I sprain a face muscle. I have a once-promising colleague who's dead to me because he says that.

 

Overuse of football terms is always funny to me.

I once had a colleague who, despite appearing to be an everyday American bro, didn't know the first thing about sports. He fit every other stereotype . . likes beer, girls, off color jokes, weed etc . . but for whatever reason the sports thing escaped him from birth. Maybe had weird parents I dunno.

Anyways, we were first years in IB and he'd be in meetings where someone used a football term, and he would write it down and come by my desk later and ask me quietly what it meant. "Is calling an audible a football thing?" "I know blocking and tackling is football but what does that mean here?".

 
"PteroGonzalez" Overuse of football terms is always funny to me.

I once had a colleague who, despite appearing to be an everyday American bro, didn't know the first thing about sports. He fit every other stereotype . . likes beer, girls, off color jokes, weed etc . . but for whatever reason the sports thing escaped him from birth. Maybe had weird parents I dunno.

Anyways, we were first years in IB and he'd be in meetings where someone used a football term, and he would write it down and come by my desk later and ask me quietly what it meant. "Is calling an audible a football thing?" "I know blocking and tackling is football but what does that mean here?".

I think that dude was just trying to hit on you.

 

Cultured Europeans mingle different languages when a certain expression sounds better in another language, ie. schadenfreude, à propos, sprezzatura, et cetera.

 

ah Schadenfreude! felt but not spoken.

“Doesn't really mean shit plebby boi. LMK when you're pulling thiccboi cheques.“ — @m_1
 
"C.R.E. Shervin" If you don't use "delta" and "de minimus" are you really C-Suite. Also, "trust the process."

I'm going to disagree with the up-front strategy. I had to completely re-write a due diligence questionnaire today because the RFP writer was clueless and it was for a major potential client and already overdue.

When it asked about liquidity I almost wrote that: "The fund narrows the portfolio using a Herfindahl–Hirschman Index until it is at an effective N that is two thirds that of the benchmark index."

Eventually I decided that I needed to not piss off my client, and wrote: "The fund removes low ranking stocks until it is 2/3 as liquid as the benchmark. See Appendix C, P.47 for details."

Sometimes you need to know your client, and then save the big words just in case they challenge you for using the small ones. When they go on Wikipedia or Investopedia and realize that those are real things and related to each other, they will never challenge you again and thank you for using little words, because you're smarter than them.

The only difference between Asset Management and Investment Research is assets. I generally see somebody I know on TV on Bloomberg/CNBC etc. once or twice a week. This sounds cool, until I remind myself that I see somebody I know on ESPN five days a week.
 

That's not "big words", that's industry jargon. "big words" are used to replace 1-3 words where 1 word would complete the sentence more succinctly.

For example why say it's a bluish and yellowish color instead of it's green.

Or

Instead of saying Crying provides psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions. = Crying is cathartic.

What you wrote about the Herfindahl index uses just as many words in both cases.

 

Does anyone besides Sixers fans say "trust the process" unironically?

I’m a fun guy. Obviously I love the game of basketball. I mean there’s more questions you have to ask me in order for me to tell you about myself. I'm not just gonna give you a whole spill... I mean, I don't even know where you're sitting at
 

Confluence and bifurcate are words I hear a lot in IB and consulting; don't think it's pretentious at all to use 'em; just make sure you use big works in the right context or else you'll just look silly; use 'em or lose 'em

 
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"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

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