Insanely low hours, what to do?

Currently working as an investment analyst for an open ended fund and will have a year of experience in total in a month. So far I have really enjoyed what I do with the usual investment/acquisition tasks, and 2 assets I do AM for.

To my "issue". The fund I work for is a lifestyle fund to the max, long lunch breaks, hours aren't long even during reporting seasons etc. All in all its been a great learning experience, but I am getting to a point in which I'm afraid of not learning enough. On a weekly basis I probably work around 20 hours max and its killing me with boredom. We have good deal flow for a fund our size, but its not enough to keep us busy for the whole year. I have been doing modelling courses, reading, etc. but obviously there is a limit to how much a person can read as well.

I have two options, either try to lateral within Europe (ideally to a different country as the one I am currently staying at is too small), or to stick around for another year and then look for senior analyst/associate gigs. Both obviously have their negatives and positives and I would like some input if possible.

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Similar situation - I'd ask what your end goal is.

Tbh I think extreme excel modeling skills are a bit over rated, but once you've built enough models I'd focus on learning broader financial concepts and being tied into global/regional economic trends. I've noticed more and more a lot of decisions my VPs make are just as much based on the Fed meeting minutes and macro economic reports as well as what our models say (i.e. "Let's try to get this pushed through before Q2 GDP numbers get released and show we're in a technical recession"). Easy thing to do is to take the CFA.

At the end of the day if you're trying to buy or sell something (not just real estate), you're just convincing other people how to deploy capital - if you learn those techniques you'll be working for yourself and be making more money a lot quicker.

 

Thanks for the insight!

Our team does the same as your VPs, as mentioned somewhere in the thread we are only 3 in total so I get to "participate" in the decision making. I have a masters in Financial Economics and I've been thinking of starting the road towards the CFA, but I sort of need a short breather in between the two.

The last paragraph is spot on.

 

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