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?

22 Comments
 

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.

All I care about in life is accumulating bananas
 

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...

 

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?

 

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