Me, a bachelor's degree and Wall Street

I dont know a whole lot about but what I have been hearing is that banks are in bad times these days

but on the + side commodities are up so maybe you should think of becoming a commodities trader, I believe they are on Wall St as well

 

Yes, definitely wrong category, should be in OOT.

However, why are you thinking of Wall Street? Europe has plenty of financial institutions that are active in stocks, equities, commodities, currency exchange, bonds, funds, investment banking, M&A, etc. Even if you want to work for a WS firm at some point, perhaps you can start in a foreign branch office of a WS firm then work out a transfer at some point (obviously you'll have to demonstrate merit and value).

 

First off do you have an American passport or a green card. While the U.S goverment will be very happy to give you a visa to buy an education in a U.S university you will have a big problem being able to work on Wall Street without a U.S passport or a Green Card or some other extremly hard to get work visa.

If I was you I would focus on attending a good Buisiness School/University in your own country and build from there. There are plenty of opportunnities for wall st type careers in London for example. Grades are just one of many barriers to entry into many professions. Bottom line is if you really want to go into this career, nothing will stop you and you will find a way in the door.There is ALWAYS a way in for those that persist. It may not be through the Ivy League paved front door...so what...plenty of great careers were started through the back door, side door or any other door you care to name. Good luck, my best advice is just follow your dream, never give up and and it will happen.

 

Stock broker and investment banker are two fairly different jobs.

A stock broker talks on the phone a lot to stimulate client transaction activity. There are two types of stock broker - retail and institutional. A retail stock broker talks on the phone a lot to get individuals to buy or sell stocks through the brokerage. An institutional stock broker tries to get institional investors (money managers at banks, insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds, etc.) to buy or sell stocks through the brokerage.

Investment banker is a fairly broad term. Fundamentally, an investment banker helps companies raise money through debt or equity issuance, or advises companies on corporate transactions such as M&A. What does this entail? For a senior investment banker it's about relationships. For example, the word on the street is that High Growth Internet Play Corp needs to raise $30m. The investment banking firm puts Mr. Senior Investment Banker on the job. He calls up the CEO of High Growth Internet Play Corp to pitch his services by talking about how much money he raised for other companies. A successful pitch can lead to engagement of the investment banking firm. Mr. Senior Investment Banker then needs to line up potential investors (VC's, hedge funds, strategic investors). Meanwhile Mr. Investment Banking Analyst (junior guy) needs to work like a dog preparing materials such as spreadsheet financial models, teaser documents, and presentation decks. It's not unusual for Mr. Investment Banking Analyst to have to work 15 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week on a deal. If the management team of High Growth Internet Play Corp does a great job telling the company "story" to the right investors (with the help of the materials prepared by the investment bank), they could succeed in pulling in the money. The investment bank then gets paid a percentage of the raise.

 

If you're interested in investment banking getting an internship at a brokerage can't hurt, even if it's not directly relevant experience. It at least demonstrates your interest in the broad industry. The entry level position into investment banking is usually the analyst job I described. Investment banks recruit analysts from among the best students, so academic performance should be the big focus for you over the next few years.

 

As a long term strategy (5+yrs) you could complete a first degree in EU then work for a couple of years (top MBA programmes generally do not accept recent graduates - you need work experience) you could then apply to do an MBA at Harvard or Wharton. Graduating from either of these will give you more opportunities than you can currently imagine

 

May not be totally accurate. From what I remember reading some of the top MBA programs are dropping their work requirements because many people want to transition from undergrad into graduate school sooner rather than later. I know that's what I did with my University of Wisconsin MBA!

 

I would try and get a job in the upcoming stock markets such as Brazil , India and Saudi Arabia.

 

FYI - I'm writing this from a trading floor with 850 people on it about 9 blocks from Wall Street.

Here's the skinny:

You aren't one of the "boys". You don't know anyone. Your father doesn't know anyone. Not that that will necessarily keep you from getting a job, but your second year on the floor, when Equities or Fixed Income or whatever group you work in had a bad year and they need to cut 10% - you're on the A-list of those to be cut, regardless of your performance. And even if you do make the cut ... the good old days are gone. Commissions are now regulated and as the artificial intelligence improves, they cut more and more trading positions every year. Most of these guys are doing okay, $150K salary, maybe another $50K in bonus ... but $200K a year in NY isn't much at all. Half a million dollars around here buys you a 500sq ft studio apartment.

I don't know where you read about the A's across the board crap, but if that were the case 90% of these guys would never have gotten a foot in the door. You don't need to be an incredible mind to be a trader. Client sends you order, you execute order - end of story. Company decides that "X" is a good buy, you call customers and push X. Being a good salesmen and a general people-person is MUCH more important than being able to pick stocks. This isn't like the movies, when I get here at 7AM I don't see hundreds of men staring at charts or research reports - they're surfing the web checking the stats after last night's Yankees game shooting the shat about the 20 year old receptionist in the lobby and the latest accessory they bought for their Ipod. Most of these guys have an extremely tough time operating a computer. Once 4PM hits - they sit back, check their profit & loss for the day, curse a few times, then get the hell out of Dodge. No burning the midnight oil reviewing today's decisions, no calling the customers to strategize on tomorrow's efforts ... just go home, bang the wife, come back the next day.

You want to make money on Wall St.? Mergers and Acquisitions. Go to business school. While you're there, brush up on your Word, Excel, and Powerpoint abilities until you get to a point where you could teach the Microsoft Developers a thing or two about the apps (and seriously speaking, without IMPRESSIVE Excel abilities, you will not make the cut - you will be too slow). Then you have to get hired as a grunt, an assistant, a bottom of the barrel $60K/yr-if-you're-lucky nobody who will work 100 hours a week for the next 5 years. When that's done though, if you aren't one of the 98% who will burn-out and drop out or get fired along the way - you'll be making a few million a year until you retire at 35 years old with a heart-condition and 12 serious ailments all related to stress. You will have no family, but now that you're retired you can work on that.

If you've read Liar's Poker .. those days are gone.

Bill

P.S. The future is Derivatives. The only desk on my floor that will expanding in headcount this year is Derivs. That said, derivative products are going to cause the next big Wall St crash ... I'm calling it now.

 

Its going to be quite a while till this bear is down, meanwhile there is a bull in commodities that should last a few decades, that wont change unless we have a lot less people buying less stuff

 

Thank you for taking the time to post that!! Very informative.

 

I am in a PhD program, so I obviously did not try and break into Wall Street, but a few of my friends from undergrad have obtained fairly good jobs in NYC, and they didn't come from a top-5 school or Ivy (my undergrad was a top 30 liberal arts school). I know people who have gotten positions with UBS, Merrill Lynch, JPMC, Lehman Bros (perhaps a bad example now), and some others. They all did internships prior to full-time employment. Also, none of these people graduated with 4.0's (some graduated magna with honors, some did considerably worse). Also, anecdotally, I know a few people from mid-ranked schools that now work at GS, smaller boutique firms, etc. and some of them are making $500k with higher bonuses. It's not really my experience that most people in the industry come from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and then with 4.0GPAs. Take this with a grain of salt, however, since I am not in the field...

Just to add, the lives of everyone that I know who works in finance are almost exactly as Bill Ng described. Although some have children raised by nannies...

 

Well, thank you bill for this interesting write up. This is what i believe it looked like before i decided not to go into finance. And i guess you're right about the derivatives.

Again, M&A and investment banking is the way to go, but not necessarly the way you might think.

You'll never be a big player, if you go the way you want to go; unless you are scoring on big deals, you are from a family with old money or you have excellent connections.
IMHO, best thing to do is to start a business... whatever... something that allows you to play with goods, natural ressources, transport infrastructures... And not in the US but on some emerging markets... Once you are set, find yourself a small country or group of countries that have outstanding GDP growth (5%+/yr on a long term) and that are stable (politically speaking). They need to have a dynamic local stock exchange. Start a small investment firm... but able to rise (big) funds for big local projects... this kind of experience is probably more amazing than a stock broker job on Wall Street. Nowadays (mind it when you'll finish studies it might be different), as far as i'm concerned, countries that compell to these requirements are the three baltic states (LT, LV, EST), they have dynamic stock echange markets, that are boosted by local economy and less dependent on what's going on in the US. Did you know it's a Lithuanian bank which is financing Spyker F1?










By the way, Stefan you have a good english level for your age.

 

I'm 19 and just wrapping my first year of University (in Colorado, but I'm transferring to NYU or GWU). I'm double majoring in finance & political science and double minoring in economics & math while also getting a certificate in quantitative finance (I have no friends).

All I can recommend is learn math. Lots and lots of math. Then add some more math.

 

I post on www.wallstreetoasis.com as I'm also keeping investment banking open as a 'maybe' for me. Lots of invaluable information there.

 

Bill, are u the same Bill Ng, that used to drive in the car park rallies in spore with the plate 972? Not sure.. but he was also a trader. So thought. it might just be you.

 

Ex-IB'er. Chances of CorpFin or M&A are slim to none. Sorry. Better odds of getting onto a trading desk or into private client. Let me also say that the work isn't terribly satisfying, either.

CW

 

for someone so passionate about math, it is somewhat of a mystery that you minored in it