Is speculation a good reason for passion in finance?
Hi everyone,
I am about to send my application for insight internships and I am having doubts about my Cover Letter. In section "why finance?" I said the truth why I chose it over other industries. It is speculation which I find really appealing. How to sell when there's euphoria, how to buy when people panic. Stories when huge speculators have awful positions but they manipulate public opinion to make profit from it anyway and so on. So I started wondering whether it is not shooting myself in the foot. I am applying mostly for internships in Asset Managements. What are your opinions should I change it or leave it?
Speculation is a really bad reason for asset management in particular - you'd want to show that you can be prudent and guide a client's money towards sustainable yearly growth, not taking on huge risks or try to time the market with someone else's money.
I would look towards S&T if you're interested in the high-stakes feel of a trading floor and the whole emotional part of buying/selling, but even then anyone who's old enough to have been through a few market cycles is probably going to be surprised to hear you say you love speculation. For a cover letter I would focus on different reasons personally, your passion can shine through elsewhere without directly saying something that could come off the wrong way
Thanks for your advice, I will change it to something more 'diplomatic'. Speaking of my choice, I chose AM over S&T because I don't find market making that interesting, I want to work in prop trading or for HF ultimately and I thought AM is more connected with that.
Sorry bro, but I think your perception of what asset management is is severely misguided.
Picture slightly under-weighting and over-weighting a few companies within a broad indice based off of detailed research and a long drawn out thesis. - Understand that you'll have to defend all of your decisions to an investment committee - You'll have strict limits in what you can invest in defined by the funds' prospectus - You also won't be doing any actual investing any time soon. Would assume a lot of your time is spent putting together presentations for investment committees, sorting through pages and pages of research, and other bitch work for the portfolio managers.
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