The Investment Banking Thread: Our Excel Models Smell of Rich Mahogany

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > The Investment Banking Thread: Our Excel Models Smell of Rich Mahogany

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Koppite posted:

I just got an interview for an instiutional equity sales position. In short... what is that? Is that executing equity sales for large instiutions or selling research or? Help!

Is it sales trading or research sales? Or did was that the thrust of your question?

# ¿ Jul 14, 2011 05:56

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:08

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

tolerabletariff posted:

What exactly is "sales trading"? I've heard the term used repeatedly but Google isn't particularly helpful (lots of results for Sales & Trading, even with quotes. I mean, I get securities sales and trading (post-Volcker, just market-making I guess) makes sense, but what's "sales trading"? And how is it different from being on a straight-up sales desk?

Also institutional equity sales means you're on an equity sales desk and your book is comprised of institutional investors like pension funds, mutual funds, and the like. I don't know if you're selling the research as much as the trades, but you'll be reading a lot of reports from Equity Research and making recommendations to clients based on them.

So in sales and trading (as it's been explained to me during my experiences on trading floors) there are 3 areas: research sales, sales trading, and prop trading. Not all shops have all three, but the ones who are at least middle market should.

Research sales is pretty straight-forward: selling your analysts and analysis to clients. Sales trading is essentially crossing trades and placing trades for clients. Proprietary trading, in these shops, is used as a tool to help buyers and sellers (that their sales traders can't cross) with counter-parties (that is, their mandate is to not lose much money, as opposed to making huge wads of cash, but if they do make cash - great).

That's my understanding and interpretation, someone else's experience might be different. This is where I'm trying to get in mainly (although I've been hearing good things about PWM also so that could be A Thing).

# ¿ Jul 14, 2011 17:09

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Is anyone seeing off-cycle stuff up on HR websites? I'd love if they could help a goon out!

# ¿ Jul 15, 2011 23:08

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

tolerabletariff posted:

As far as I can tell, online apps don't even get looked at. You really only have a chance if you network and get your resume to the right people.

That's pretty much what I figured, especially now. Lovely.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2011 12:55

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

If you're interested in the Trading side and/or the CDS/MBS stuff, either of Michael Lewis' books are good. Liar's Poker and The Big Short are phenomenal to say the least.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2011 16:02

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Vexxal posted:

So I'm a high school student (A year left before I start college) and this career greatly interests me for the following reasons:
-maths is as much a hobby to me as anything else
-i'm quite happy to work 100 hours a week
-i like the idea of constantly worrying about how the stocks are going to go
-some (possibly psuedo) science about a high dopamine personality and how it's good for investment banking
-infinite room for progress
-new york looks awesome
-that motherfucking bell i always see on CNN

I am in the process of looking up more, but basically, I'm Irish, so going to ivy league/Oxbridge/LSE etc. will be hard. I think oxbridge will be impossible because it's too late for me to do the STEP test ( an aptitude test required for mathematics)
But I can still go to trinity college dublin which is about 50th worldwide (15th for maths, better then a couple of ivy league colleges) and UCD (second best in ireland but not so highly ranked. Would either of these be good enough? What if I got a first class honour in something like Maths and Economics or "management science and information systems studies" (basically a mix of finance, programming business, economics, mathematics, quantitative analysis and personal skills. it's almost as if it was made for IB'ing eh?) as well as taking active part in societies, and being on the school swim team, and hopefully getting a foundation scholarship (best ~20 students in the college) would I have a shot ? As I said, I'd love to be able to go to new york. afaik there arent any front office investment banking roles in Dublin.
My main question is: based on the sliver of information you have about me, would it be suitable? Which of these college courses would be best:
Maths and economics in trinity college dublin
Management science and information system studies in trinity college dublin
Actuarial and financial studies in the less prestigious UCD

Thanks in advance! And it's two o clock at night where I am so sorry if my post is poorly constructed

Frankly, there's a lot of firms, it looks like, that have EMEA stuff open right now. So if you want to work in London or something, it's doable. If you'd really rather be in NYC and you actually love math, consider pursuing a MS in math or possibly a Phd. It's not a guarantee of work, but those guys (especially top performing ones) will be seriously considered for trading, hedge funds, etc.

If you want to work deals, though, begin looking at small firms in your area or in London. Talk to the business school at Trinity and see how often they place someone in IB. Make sure you begin applying to summer analyst positions as soon as possible and by casting a wide net. Co-op, part-time, or off-cycle positions may be open to you if you keep your eyes open. The most critical thing to do is to get out ahead of the recruiting cycle - prepare yourself well academically by achieving highly but still by challenging yourself. Make sure you know when all the dates are for applications, but equally important, attend recruiting events either at your school or nearby. Demonstrate initiative and pursue leads.

Hopefully some of that helps you, but frankly it's pretty open-ended, I know.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2011 02:09

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Our Gay Apparel posted:

Probably not the best thread for it, but not sure where it would be. Where would I look for more in-depth explanations of derivatives? I don't know why, but I find them fascinating. I've already read ECONned and How I Caused the Credit Crisis (which actually has excellent explanations of arbitrage CDOs and such, interspersed with all the stripper/drugs bullshit). Preferably ones that are being commonly traded currently.

What types of derivatives are you most interested in right now? Fixed Income derivatives like ABS, swaps and forwards? Options, commodity derivatives (like ETFs), or something like that? Most Finance textbooks have pretty good primers on most of the types.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2011 22:23

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Its Miller Time posted:

This is a really hard situation. Stay on your school's job board and keep spamming resumes. This is the time when I'd really try and think of every contact you and your parents have, and looking for your alumni directory and cold-calling. I'm not sure what else you can do. If you don't find something you might have to consider a masters program that would allow you to recruit again.

edit: And also, be realistic. You've already graduated, have a low GPA, and went to a non-target. Do you really think you're going to happen into one of those rare PE/buy-side analyst positions? Most PE jobs out of college are cold-calling anyway. Your best bet might be a small real estate investment company helping with their existing properties and helping do the diligence and analysis on potential acquisitions.

edit2: Also calling everyone you worked with during your "internships on the buy side" for anything they can give you.

This is pretty practical advice, but I'd say you also have a more circuitous route - doing temp work and temp-to-perm positions at low levels of areas of finance you'd like to be in. It's no doubt more work and time intensive as you work your way up, but if this is where you want to be, it is doable.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2011 04:03

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Nevitt posted:

Apologies if this isn't the correct thread. I've got a interview with a London based Hedge fund for an entry level quant analyst job as part of the Derivatives Trade Compression Team (not 100% sure on what this technically is). Background is just out of Bath doing Fluid Dynamics, no financial background, bit of Matlab/Fortran programming. Is there anything I should really be doing in addition to this

- Researched company background and main people to a certain extent.
- Trying to get through as much of Crack's "Basic Black-Scholes" and "Heard on the street" as possible. Further with Hull's "Options, Futures and Derivatives".
- Reading up on Greece, Euro, general goings on in markets, etc.

Does anyone have experience of going through these sorts of interviews?

It sounds like you're on the right track in terms of your preparation so far. Keep researching the formulae that you'd likely be using. Be sure that your advanced math skills are up to par though, just to be safe. Good luck on your interview!

# ¿ Sep 22, 2011 18:07

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Thoogsby posted:

FT Recruiting is looking like an absolute bloodbath for people right now. Thank god I have another year although we could be in apocalyptic hell-scape by then I suppose.

Everyone I've spoken to says they're not going to make any FT hiring decisions until January at the earliest in the BBs.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2011 03:47

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Thoogsby posted:

I'm doing a presentation for my Macro-Theory class on how higher education has bubble potential. Pretty scary stuff.

Potential may not be the right word, maybe actualization? The education market is basically already there.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 02:58

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

tolerabletariff posted:

To be a real bubble there has to be burst potential (ie not just prices increasing indefinitely). Prices definitely won't be coming down, and I don't mean that in the "the value of my real estate will always go up!" sense--there will always be demand for college education and plenty of lenders offering juicy nondischargeable (and largely gov't-guaranteed) loans to pay for it.

Well it seems like a bubble to me because of the number of people who have gone back to school of late and are saturating the market, driving up the costs associated with school only to experience disappointment and still more financial hardships in many cases on the other side. Repeat this process enough and demand will disappear as people shift away from returning to school.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2011 03:32

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Swingline posted:

Please roll in as a summer analyst/first year wearing french cuffs. Also be sure to wear a bowtie to stand out from your peers. And once you're feeling comfortable after a week or so break out a double breasted suit. They'll probably just give you a full time offer on the spot or promote you to an associate if you're already FT.

They should also be wearing suspenders in lieu of a belt as well.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2012 23:39

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Swingline posted:

I had a dream about excel last night and it's getting to the point where whenever I close my eyes I see columns. I also almost punched my computer at work today when I accidentally opened excel 2007 instead of 2003 loading a model. Intern checking in.

Your life... will die. As will your friends. Good, I can feel your anger. It is defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike it down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!

# ¿ Jun 27, 2012 17:21

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Swingline posted:

5 years ago I was playing world of warcraft 16 hours a day. Now I'm 21 and playing excel 16 hours a day. It feels good to be so valuable to society.

Well, WoW is really not far off, just has a better GUI. Although, if you were playing EVE Online, aka "Spreadsheets: the Video Game", then we'd really be talking!

# ¿ Jun 28, 2012 01:17

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:08

GO FUCK YOURSELF: Aug 19, 2004; "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

Swingline posted:

So I'm networking with alums in IB, been going pretty well so far. One alum (VP at a BB) gets back to me responding "Hey [Swingline]... How are you? I'd love to catch-up. This week is going to be a bit tough. How is your calendar for next week?"

He pretty much pulled a move straight out of American Psycho by not reading my email and assuming I'm some guy he went to undergrad with who wants to catch up I think. My email is pretty clear so that has to be the case. I'm gonna respond tomorrow morning...what the hell do I say that will let him know I'm a rising senior that he's never met without ruining my chances of having a productive informational interview?

Some people literally just talk like that. I've responded to email requests once or twice to meet up with people in a similar vein, but only if someone I know has sent an introduction email first

# ¿ Jul 11, 2012 03:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > The Investment Banking Thread: Our Excel Models Smell of Rich Mahogany