I have been struggling quite a bit at work recently (more on that here). You may recall from my previous posts that I have really wanted to get into direct investing for the past 3-4 years … basically the entirety of my career. Recently, however, just as I got chances to work on directs, I have been messing up SO MUCH. I’m not saying that messing up is not allowed. Of course, it’s inevitable. I expected this – if everyone was perfect at direct investing then there’d be nothing to trade on – no alpha to be gained! But the emotional hit is pretty awful. I keep feeling that nothing in directs will ever make sense to me. I understand the technical of building a model but how do people manage to make and be comfortable with their assumptions?
My manager says that for him, the key is to read a lot – read 10K’s, read research reports, read anything and everything that has anything and everything to do with the company structure, the underlying assets, the market conditions, the business model. I’ve been trying to do that, and feeling increasingly overwhelmed. I have been staying up late, getting up early, just to stay afloat, fulfilling my current responsibilities while managing the learning curve for directs. Balancing a lot more new things means that at times, I’ve gotten tired … and sloppy. I just accidentally missed an earnings call.
Directs is not easy. The flow among financial statements, the iterative functions of debt, the effect of currency exchange rates on sales and costs – none of those things are intuitive to me. Not to mention, the terms are hard to understand (Investopedia has been my best friend these past couple of weeks). Of course, I know that I just need to keep persevering, but during times like this, I can’t help but recount my regrets … so here goes:
I regret not getting an investment banking or consulting job right out of undergrad. Seriously, the decisions you make as a 22 year old have ramifications. Had I started out in a structured and huge organization with built-in training for spreadsheet or capital structure modeling, then this would all be second nature to me. I wouldn’t be a 27 year old trying to figure out the stuff that a 22 year old knows by heart, having been through a bank’s training program.
On a related note, I regret not getting better grades to set myself up to get a job at an investment bank or consultancy. I had some consulting offers, sure, but the bulk of the envied positions went to people with 3.8+ GPA’s. It doesn’t even seem fair. I was not busy drinking, I was not lazy, I did not overload on extracurriculars. In fact, I worked very, very hard, going to half a dozen office hours a week, forming study groups, and declining social activities. I just had a difficult major, which I stuck with because it challenged me and I liked that.
I regret not having gone back to school to change my career. I had a chance a couple of years ago, when I was transitioning out of my first job… but I wasn’t excited by the prospect of going back to school, so I decided not to. Had I gone back to school, I would be graduating in 6 months, probably going into a direct investing role, or a role that transitions into direct investing.
I regret not leveraging the reputational currency of my former employer more. Because direct investing was not something that was possible for me at my previous firm, I discounted its ability to get me on the direct investing path. I hugely regret that now, because I realize just how much other investors value its name brand. I wish I had used that to my advantage.
I regret not taking more risk. Whether that’s reaching out to more people to ask for help and mentorship, or taking liberties in generating analytics. I am doing that more now, but it’s a learning curve for me, since it is not something I’m used to.
Anyway, now that I have enumerated this regrets, I hope to move past them, and retain the lessons for my future success!
Xoxo, the closing belle
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BLOGTOBER: Blogging every other day in October!
