And by the way, the day started out lousy, too. I walked the 10 blocks to the subway with both work and personal laptops, several packets of research, and my gym sneakers in tow only to find I had forgotten my wallet when I went to dig for my MetroCard. Smooth. (Leave it up to me to bring everything but the kitchen sink when I need the kitchen sink the most.)
As I am alone with Phil the Phal (my flowerless orchid plant) in a sea of empty cubicles, I decided to dedicate most of today working on a memo that isn't due very immediately but definitely needs a head start because I know basically nothing about the space (yieldcos). Let us take a semi-relevant tangent.
...For almost all of my career life, I'd been the most junior person on a very hierarchical team on the "capital allocator" side... not only was the team itself 3 layers sheltered form the actual investment, I was also supporting the senior analyst who supported the VP who supported the PM, etc. so yeah, I was very removed. By the time an investment trickled down to me, the "analytics" involved hard-coding data into a template. A year ago, you probably couldn't even count on me to tell you what a dividend is.
But after paying my dues for a couple of years, I'm starting to ramp up on the responsibilities front, and now I'm at a place where my boss encourages me to be a little more independent. I'm loving that. But also really, really lost some times.
In order to work on this memo, I needed someone to point me to credible sources where I can find information on yieldcos. That's the thing about working in investments - there aren't "textbooks." Whereas I could always consult a periodic table or some sort of scale in my prior life as a lab rat, I find myself struggling to find starting points now. I decided last week to reach out to one of the many large investment banks that we work with in investment sourcing. I got redirected to someone with a big fancy title and long-ass department name. We set up a call for this afternoon. This is the disastrous call of which I speak.
After cursory introductions - our biographies, teams, foci, we launched into the guys on the other line talking enthusiastically at me about yields. And policies. Very many numbers. Very many abbreviations and tickers I couldn't catch. Whoa. I typed up what I heard -- verbatim -- as I had no idea what I was listening to and was therefore unable to filter down what was important, what was not. (This was my strategy when I first came into this industry... and it served me well. 20+ large notebooks bit the dust at my previous firm as a result of it.)
Have any questions? One guy asked, as the other took a breath after his 20-minute soliloquy about the merits of renewables subsidies.
Um, yeah I did! So obviously, I asked them. Yes, my questions were probably very elementary. Especially since these two guys were sector specialists. But to me, these were the "smart" questions that made it after I pruned down a far more extensive list with even dumber questions. I had pored over research to distill these questions. So I was gonna ask them, believe you me.
But the reaction from the other line was not so receptive. And I was asked, "Why don't you go look at the publicly available information to help you understand?" (Because judging from the quality of my questions, I'm clearly not smart enough to have thought of Googling...)
And "Is there someone else on your team who might cover this area or is it just you?" (because an idiot like me can't possibly be worthy enough to understand the complex valuation metrics of a completely man-made investment instrument and yes btw there is someone else on the team... many in fact... who know a heck of a lot more than I do, but I'm betting they started off just like me -- knowing very little and sitting in a cubicle with their version of Phil "the Bloomless" Phal -- so I'm not budging, thanks.)
I don't know. I might be overreacting, but I felt really saddened and embarrassed and discouraged after that call. I guess the silver lining is, at least I opened a dialogue. And now I know that I need to be way more prepared for these "sector expert" calls.
xoxo shel
