Happy Quarter-Century B-Day To NT's #1 Essayist!!! (Rexanglorum)

I want Rex and Meth to have a writing contest... i'll moderate.
smile.gif
 
From won TGP member too another, happy birthday; man.

Hope your having a good won.

wink.gif
 
Rexanglorum exuded:

I never thought the day would come that I would have enough education and life experience to be in a position to hopefully give some helpful advice to another educated adult. A few years ago I would sometimes be asked by highschoolers for advice but they were kids. Now that I am 24 years old, I am in the surreal position of imparting wisdom gained through my occasional triumphs and frequent mistakes in undergrad.

Let me first address your first point about how certain parts of the financial services industry seem restricted only to those who went to Harvard, Yale, McGill, Oxford and half dozen or so other universities. It a few cases it is pretty much true that you can only get certain positions at certain firms if you have impeccable credentials, among them an MBA from the Harvard B-school or from Wharton School of Business. In other cases, it is very helpful to have gone to a top five or top ten university but there as people whose educational credentials are less than perfect and that deficiency is offset by very impressive past performances. Beyond that is sort of the "second tier" of finance and it is only second tier because the incomes pale in comparison to what hedge fund and ibanking bosses make but compared to the average American or Canadian worker a stoke broker, financial analyst, mutual fund VP, mutual fund manager, small bank officer or VP and even financial planning partner are very lucrative. I know this world of second tier finance because of my family and because of where I live.

In Los Angeles, we have a large and thrivin gfinancial sector but with New York as the center of finance in the US, we are in good position, far from the culture of 90 hour work weeks, exotic securities and delusional megalomaniacs (we have them in LA, they just work in Hoolywood instead of our financial district) but we are close enough to the action that six figure jobs are common, exotic cars zip through down town on the way to Staples Center, managers and their relatively well compensated worker bees are busy but still tend to find time to get in some surfing before work or a few hours of drinks after work. I have many older relatives and family friends whose bonuses (which makes up the lion's share of most financial professional's income) are six figures and a few whose manage to crack the seven figure barrier.
These lower stress but still well compensated jobs tend to be managing wealth, over the long haul. Generally the more long run type of finance, the lower the stress and the more numerous the jobs and opportunities for someone to get started in finance. The same holds true for the number of hands one is from the orgin of the financial products. The people, who make the financial products by creating or combining assembling assets, tend to have more stress and are in a more competitive environment compared to those who deal in secondary markets, tertierary markets and/or retail sale of assets. Some of these second tier financial jobs that are very remunerative include, stock broker, VP of sales for a financial firms, manager of a bank branch, an executive position for a small, regional bank (I know that Canada does not have nearly the same number Banks but in the Us we have over 8,000 banks so while the CEOs of BofA or Citi group may have a Wharton MBA, someone who heads up a local credit union or a small regional bnak will ahve less education, less income but will also be making far more than almost all other workers in that same community), owner/partner of a wealth management firm, financial analyst for a mutual fund, VP for a mutual fund, fund manager and compliance officer.

The job and niche of the industry I understand the most where I am currently working. My second cousin has his own wealth management firm and what they do is talk to their high cap clients (most of them are institutional funds and others are simply just rich individuals), consult with what the clients want and then we loo kat securities and try to find the optimal stragey for the investment horizon and risk tolerance they give us. My cousin started his firm just five years after getting his first job as an in house corporate analyst (he worked for a large compnay that was not i nfinancial services but all large companies want people who can be on top of the compny's finances and who can project the future of the firm's finances. In 1989, my cousin started this business of his and now he lives very well and was able to get me a job.

Another position may be taking this year is as a stock borker. This job is somewaht risky and involves sales but much of the job is based on analyzing securities, knowing the array of option that your firm can provide and when you can combine a knowledge of various securities along ith salesmanship and the ability to listen to clients' wishes and desires, you can make a great deal of money. Also, being a broker sets the satge for moving into anothet job analyst.

Financial analyst was the job I wanted to get after college. The pay is not impressive in the first two years and the hours are even worse. In Los Angeles and other financial centers that are not New York, the hours are not 80 to 100 but 45 t 60 hours of work per week is very common. The good thing about being an analyst is it prepares you to be able to do many things. If you are an in house analyst, you are in good position to move within the company and to become part of senior managemnt and maybe even CFO or CEO. If you are an analyst for an investment house or mutual fund, you are in position to become a VP and eventually a fund manager. Jobs like VP and fund manager pay very little next to hedge funds and investment banks but they still can often times be high six figures or low seven figures.

There are numerous other jobs in finance that I know almost nothing about beyond its name so look around more but remember the positions that I named because those are very common in finance. In the meanwhile, just get as good of GPA as possible and after graduating, try to find the toughest financial jobs possible (working in a big four accounting firm can also under grid a rise in finance later on just as well as being an analyst can) and if you are a good worker and get the attention of management, they can recommend you to a top business school and that is how many people get into elite business schools. Even if it is not an elite business school, getting an MBA is a smart decision, especially because your employer will likely wholly or partially subsidize your education.

One things to remember is that the financial sector is very fluid and the nature of jobs changes in faster then in other sectors so by the time you have graduated and have worked a few years thing could very different, especially right now with so many things being restructured and firms trying change how they are organized, how they compensate employees and almost all other aspects to how their businesses are presently constituted. Good luck with all that and feel free to ask me any further question or to ask for any clarifications on what I already have said.


When it comes to Austrian economics, I would recommend a few books. The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit by Hayek and a Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell are some of my favorites. When it comes to Austrian economics reading though, the best source are probably blogs. Go to Cafehayek.com and read the new post and archived posts and also click around the links section and you will get a ton of information, including up to date Austrian critiques of current or putative policy.

The main points of Austrian economics is that it is incredulous of mathematical models and prefers using empirical evidence and rigorous but organic reasoning. The lack of math means that it is not great for getting a very precious predict of short term interest rates a month from now. What Austrian Economics does well is to let you see a general picture of the future, to understand why we as humans do what we do and it provides the most reasoned and potent critique of Government ownership, central banks and other forms of government controls of an economy. At its heart Austrian Economics is a philosophy and an art and is based on the understand that there are some micro economic ideas that are immutable and universal to every type of human action. The concepts of subjectivity and marginalism make up the fulcrum of this school of thought.

In addition to reading and thinking about it, Austrian Economic skills can be enhanced by applying it to any situations you see involving people. Look at how they reacted and think about why. The practice of applying economic to all sorts of seemingly trivial and/or everyday topics is very good for developing an economic way of thinking. If you are always looking at human action, you will begin to see the economic at work, the economic at work controlling the outcome and eventually this becomes almost like a sixth sense.

The weakness in Austrian economics is the same as its strength, it functions as a philosophy and an art instead of as science. Using Austrian economic alone will generally not be good for investing because it is not going to help you deal with the numbers that help you in spotting good assets to buy and bad assets to pass up on or to sell. Austrian Economics can tell you the general direction of a market and can be the foundation of your overall strategy but you need to use a more math heavy school of though to make money day to day.

I was lucky because my school's economics department was very Austrian and taught most of economics as an art and philosophy but we also got a couple of math heavy classes and when you combine the scientific and mathematical and have make up your tactics and you have AE to hell you design your strategy, you are in as good of position as any to take advantage of a market or other business endeavors, no matter what is happening in the economy as a whole.

Get to reading, get to thinking and get to watching and letting the understanding come to you. AS with the financial industry, feel free to message me back for any clarifications or further question.


If you want to talk on AIM, go ahead, my name is " "


Take care,


The end?


This guy...
laugh.gif
smh.gif
Click to expand...
 
We share the same birthday
pimp.gif


Anyways, your insightful posts are always appreciated
HBD!
 
Craftsy21, thanks for getting the thread started. 916kings, HBD to you. Thanks to all of the well wishers.

On the subject of Methodman I having a writing battle, it would be hard to have a decisive result. If I could bring together my TGP people, my team Econpeople and make a Fasutian bargain with the illegally sharing music faction, we may be able to overthrow him. Either way it would be won battle for the ages.
 
Once again, thanks to everyone for your wellwishes.

I figure I should give back to my other September babies and anyone who has a birthday in the heat of the summer. I am gonna give you guys athe gift of wisdomand some suggestions of how to have a party as great despite triple digit heat, high humidity and even some ash in the air.

For one thing, when yo uare and adult yo ushould do what you probably never would have when you hit the big 1-0 and taht is to let a grown up, a girl andcraziest of all your little sister organize the party. Girls live for organizing parties and my sister being both a latina and a future stepford wife mademiracles happen this year. She already has been helping to plan weddings, funeral wakes, graduation parties and quinceaneras. She used the heat and humdity toour advanatge and the fact tha twe are mixed, white and nicaraguan to our advanatge.

She and most of the women in my family used tehir skills to make some great french and italian appetizers (my mom and sister are graet making both types offood respectively) and then the BBQ food was Nicaraguan/Caribbean and Down Home American/Soul Food/Southern (I had so many of my Nicaraguan cousins makingblack beans, fried bananas, plantains and my German American mom was making some great potato salad) and the appetizers were a mix of tradition and tropicaland southern, dolce de lece birthday cake (thanks grandma), key lime pie and peach cobbler along with some simple and amazing local flavor, strawberries withheavy whipped cream. The drinks went along with the theme and we had lots of beers, Gin and Tonic and some powerful Rum Punch.

Along with tropical food and cold medietrranean appetizers, we beat the heat by using the pool, having heavy tarp canopies set up, misters, heavy fans and tonsof cold water. The music was also great, that was all me I had on a bucnh of different things and lot of classic west coast rap. I also kept the party smallenoug hto manage, there were about 30 or so close family and friends and there was plenty of food and even enough for every one to have a plate or two orthree to bring home.

Peopel with birthdays during times of the eyar with more mild weather have it much better, summer B days are tough to pull off out doors and in the heat buttake of this advice. Be resourcesful, be open to last minute changes and let yoyur younger sister (provided she is actuall yan adult) plan your party and tryto get your moma and grandma to get competitive about their cooking, when challenged most monms will make sure that everyone knows that their food is the bestin the neighborhood. Also do not forget about the power of misters and giant fans under heavy tarps, they will keep you cool in no matter where you have yourparty.


Peace and I am gonna make 25 a great year.
 
If you mean Cobra Commander, I would agree with you. His epic 1987 piece, "why I hate GI Joe, a citizen's guide to asking reasonable questions toan unreasonable GI Joe," truly changed the World.

But seriously though, to the users who do not know, "essayist," in Scotland means "one who can make mods into admins" and since we knowthat all Scots, regardless of if they have their own business and kids of their own all aspire to have an unpaid job that involves lots of time and supervising20 thousand teenagers, we can only conclude that KD is "fla'erin' a cer'tin essayist."
eek.gif
wink.gif
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

The ultimate sneaker enthusiast community.

NikeTalk was created as a way of giving back to both the sneaker enthusiast community and to the greater global community of which we are all a part.

NikeTalk is NOT affiliated with Nike Inc. in any way, shape, or form. All opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Nike, Inc.

© 1999-2024 NikeTalk.com

Share this page

Back
Top Bottom