Which is worse: the emptiness and drudgery of pulling operational levers while wishing to use your brain in a analytic and academic manner, or the longing to come off the analytic sidelines and play the game itself in an operational or managerial capacity?
Is it a basic introvert versus extrovert bifurcation? It seems it's not that simple. Extrovert skills are needed in research in developing contacts that will provide you with the information you need to do a great job. Extrovert skills are needed to sell your work, defend it against your peers and plead your case with portfolio managers. Introvert skills are required for the nights when you're up alone in your office updating your valuation model for the quarter end. Introvert skills are absolutely necessary when your phone doesn't ring all day and your working on a month long project to forecast next year's growth rate in U.S. aggregate consumer spending.
There are always two sides to the coin. Operations may seem pointless and automate-able while research may seem hopelessly academic.
In my opinion, the portfolio manager role provides the perfect combination of all types of work. It combines an entrepreneurial spirit in operationally managing others money with an academic, almost professorial, approach to decision making and viewing the world, and top's it all off with the ego stroking of the sales pitch. It's interesting that the successful portfolio manager is essentially a renaissance man, but he is required to specialize and succeed in single field before the opportunity to hold the position is awarded.
The Question: Why do I want to do equity research?
1. It is the dream. Equity research to portfolio management to hedge fund manager,to fame and fortune.
2. It is the perfect combination of introversion and extroversion for a person who regularly straddles the line.
3. It fulfills my egotistical insecurity i.e. the need to employ myself in some academic pursuit
4. It fulfills my emotional insecurity i.e. the need to feel superior to others in my chosen profession
5. It pays. Often it pays very well.
6. I'm passionate. I think, and I am definitely over operations.
Closing Thoughts
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." - Theodore Roosevelt
I personally believe that equity research is right for me. I straddle the line between extroversion and introversion on all the MBTI's I have ever attempted. I haven't met much success trying to be extroverted in the world of operations, and I have experienced the anxiety related to not using my critical faculties on a regular basis.
I think it's time to make another career jump.
"Write drunk; edit sober." - Ernest Hemingway
"Apologies for the mistypes and tangents" - Your humble author, disinclined to edit a blog.
Footnote:
Some philosophical thoughts for those inclined
"Write drunk; edit sober." - Ernest Hemingway
"Apologies for the mistypes and tangents" - Your humble author, disinclined to edit a blog.
Footnote:
Some philosophical thoughts for those inclined
What if the majority of my drive to be in equity research stems from my egotistical needs for acceptance from others and from myself. What if, as I grow, I become more detached and aware of my 'self' and reduce the influence of my 'self' on decision making? ....Will I quit? Will I leave everyone, run away from urban living and seek to commune with nature and the reality of existence? Probably not. </sarcasm>
Really, that all may be so. It may be that economic and societal notions of "success" are really only good for alleviating the specific type of anxiety that accompanies every ego as it travels through life. In the end, maybe the wise and "unsuccessful" are as satisfied with their lives as the "successful". Certainly it is more profitable and satisfying to become wise than to toil your life away seeking "success".
Though there is some psychological significance related to priming one's thoughts with the notion of ones own death, but I think it is comforting when I get too existential to 'remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return'. [My favorite holiday is Ash Wednesday: the day when we all admit to ourselves that we really are just dust, there is nothing more. Christianity has great ideas, but there is a more rational reason to be good than 'eternal life'. Admittedly, the benefits to the delusion of the afterlife outweigh the cons: The masses are more easily deluded than educated, and education can be manipulated while mass delusion is more easily controlled and kept on point. In the end, we are all just walking each-other home.]
Really, that all may be so. It may be that economic and societal notions of "success" are really only good for alleviating the specific type of anxiety that accompanies every ego as it travels through life. In the end, maybe the wise and "unsuccessful" are as satisfied with their lives as the "successful". Certainly it is more profitable and satisfying to become wise than to toil your life away seeking "success".
Though there is some psychological significance related to priming one's thoughts with the notion of ones own death, but I think it is comforting when I get too existential to 'remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return'. [My favorite holiday is Ash Wednesday: the day when we all admit to ourselves that we really are just dust, there is nothing more. Christianity has great ideas, but there is a more rational reason to be good than 'eternal life'. Admittedly, the benefits to the delusion of the afterlife outweigh the cons: The masses are more easily deluded than educated, and education can be manipulated while mass delusion is more easily controlled and kept on point. In the end, we are all just walking each-other home.]
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