How I spent 6 months in an investment bank

Hello Everyone. I’ve decided to begin writing of some sorts. Mostly because I felt there’s a disconnect between the information available and the methods used in practice. Also, this is good practice to keep my grammar in check. So here we go..

In my previous life I was a research assistant at a university working and building quantitative financial models. Before I joined the bank, I wondered — like most people- what life working on the trading floor would be like; yearning for a life of luxury and riches. Gutted, I took the opportunity like most normal humans would, and started my 2nd chapter as the Economic Research Analyst.

The Economic Research Analyst

I entered the role without taking a break and felt extremely nervous. My gut was telling me that I wouldn’t belong there. Nonetheless I took it up and pressed on. Over the course of the next 6 months, I would feel my frontal lobe growing exponentially and I would evidently become comfortable working in a formal and flat cultured environment. As if all that white-collared Wall-street life wasn’t enough, I would find myself working with some of the smartest people on the Earth; which was akin to me reading a new self-help book filled with wisdom old and new every other day.

Being on the economics research desk and seated beside the best macro strategists meant learning the cogs of applied economics, and how proper forecasting was done topped with accurate interpretations of macro-prudential government policies. As time passed, my interactions with them left me thinking it was actually possible for me to bat at their level if I stayed long enough.

Not only was my frontal lobe getting filled with economics, the 6 months paved and aided my self-discovery, it helped define my threshold and pursuits. Contrary to popular belief — investment bankers having to work insane hours, I was pretty blessed to be in markets (Trading floor). Working on the markets econ research desk with my manager didn’t necessarily meant spending more time; It meant spending less time doing more — batting home runs every pitch, or scoring a goal with every through pass within the stipulated time-frame. The takeaways were countless to speak of, I’d just highlight the few which stuck with me.

Here are my key takeaways for research work within an investment bank:

• Spend more time understanding the concept
• If you can’t explain it to anyone, you probably don’t understand it
• If you get stuck, talking to someone is always a good idea. It’s always faster to learn by conversing, given the little hours we have and enormous workload.
• ‘Abuse’ the vast amount of literature available

Working in research meant that I had to produce/publish my own pieces. True enough, I published my first short piece 2 months in when my manager found out I had the necessary licenses. Being at the bottom of the food-chain and receiving end of work, publishing short pieces or what we called a “focus” became a norm for me. The bulk of the time spent was never on the writing, it was on making sense of the data, carefully curating it, and of course, making sure it was all coherent and would sell (After-all, this is the sell-side). Writing for clients also meant practicing responsible writing — my manager had taught me well. Seeing people of certain seniority at respected Fund Houses respond to your articles with positive questions was a definite positive sign. The flip side however is if you produced mediocre work then you would lose credibility very quickly.

Projects/Mini-projects- they freaking love this word/phrase

3 months in and I was writing on a weekly basis, providing descriptive insight on certain economic data-sets. I became attuned to the work and started venturing on my own projects, working new visuals for some economic frameworks in R and python. Although I was trained in Economic theory, I always loved technology and writing elegant, useful code to simplify processes was a surefire way to reduce my work and also do what I love. Having heard my interest in programming, the Economist I was working for introduced me to the derivatives strategy desk where I helped build and develop an ensemble Machine Learning framework to which would screen trades using large data-sets.

Taking up this daunting project meant I had to balance between my daily work and this project which by no means was an easy task. I began leaving office at later hours — which is fine, I don’t get much done when I get home anyway. During the development process, we spoke with people who were Astrophysicists, Economists, Statisticians in their previous lives. The common subset here was they all came from quantitative fields. Seeing how the crème de la crème develop new ideas bootstrapping and performing novel Monte Carlo techniques, I began purposefully practicing to think on the same bandwidth as them, dabbling in thought experiments using some of their novel methods. It was tough and there was never an instance where I didn’t feel inferior. There was a stark contrast in talent and they were punching way beyond my weight and theirs combined.

Working on this project helped pave the way for my interest in programming and data wrangling. Also, I found myself wanting to work on issues where I could quantify my impact.

Interns- “They’re like sharks..”

Some time in June, the Summer interns joined the floor and it became a circus with them running around annoying the hell out of the regular guys on the floor. We had a very bright intern joining our desk, I decided I should help him get set-up, hopefully it’ll contribute in some way to him getting a return offer. The story here was: when I joined, no one offered me a helping hand — not because they didn’t want to, but because they were too busy trying to stay afloat. Helping someone meant they’d have less time for their day-to-day tasks. My principle was to make sure new joiners wouldn’t face the same problem as me, I reached out and made sure he had everything set-up. While the help I offered was minuscule, it sure as hell made me feel good about myself. I was reminded of this familiar feeling while working at the university. I realized I enjoyed helping people. Over the course of the intern’s next 10 weeks, he would come in every day at 7am, send out a couple of emails, trade recommendations to people on the floor, worked till midnight and do the same the following morning. When asked, he blurted that this was how the game was to be played and he wanted the return offer. Sure enough, his resilience and showing up every day making trade recommendations, he was asked to join one of the trading desks. In no time, he joined the derivatives trading desk and got the return offer. Coincidentally, I was reminded of the quote below..

“80 percent of success is just showing up” -Woody Allen, American film director

Till the next chapter..

6 months flew by, my contract ended and it marked the end of my stay at the investment bank. I was asked if I wanted to join another segment within the firm, yet I left without providing a response. Silence, in my opinion, was the more appropriate response than outright rejection — most humans like to keep their options open and I’m no exception.

Time to search for my next sunrise.

Originally published at http://thestrangecommoner.wordpress.com on November 17, 2018.