A Day in the Life Associate Investment Banking Goldman Sachs
8 30 a.m. Get in. Check e-mail and voice mail. 9 00 a.m. Breakfast with summer associates to see how they're doing. 10 00 a.m. A couple of conference calls with clients that are usually 30-minute phone meetings talking about what I'm planning on presenting to clients next week, and to find out what other topics I should discuss. We basically share ideas. 11 00 a.m. E-mailing results of conference call meeting to MDs. 11 30 a.m. Meet with analysts to assign them work. I usually give work to...
The Morning Meeting
Every morning of every trading day, each l-banking firm both on and off Wall Street holds a morning meeting. What happens at these meetings Besides coffee all around and a few yawns, morning meetings generally are a way to brief sales, trading and research on market activity - past and expected. At smaller regional firms, the entire equity group usually meets the salesforce, traders, and research analysts. The bigger firms, because of their sheer size, wire speakers to an overhead speaking...
Vice Presidents and MDs aka Bankers
As you become a banker, you begin to shift from modeling and number crunching to relationship building. This gradual transition happens during the senior associate phase as the associate begins interfacing with existing clients. Ultimately, VPs and MDs spend most of their time and energy finding new clients and servicing existing clients. VPs spend more time managing associates and analysts and the pitchbook creation process than MDs, but their responsibilities begin to resemble those of MDs at...
Corporate Finance
The stereotype of the corporate finance department is stuffy, arrogant white and male MBAs who frequent golf courses and talk on cell-phones nonstop. While this is increasingly less true, corporate finance remains the most white-shoe department in the typical investment bank. The atmosphere in corporate finance is, unlike that in sales and trading, often quiet and reserved. Junior bankers sit separated by cubicles, quietly crunching numbers. Depending on the firm, corporate finance can also be...
A Traders Cockpit
You may have wondered about the pile of computer gear a trader uses. This impressive mess of technology, which includes half a dozen blinking monitors, represents more technology per square inch than that used by any other professional on Wall Street. Each trader utilizes different information sources, and so has different computer screens spouting out data and news. Typically, though, a trader has the following Bloomberg machine Bloombergs were invented originally only as bond calculators. The...
The Fixed Income Markets
What is the bond market The average person doesn't follow it and often doesn't even hear very much about it. Because of the bond market's low profile, it's surprising to many people that the bond markets are even larger than the equity markets. Until the late 1970s and early 80s, bonds were considered unsexy investments, bought by retired grandparents, retirement funds, and insurance companies. They traded infrequently, and provided safe, steady returns. Beginning in the early 1980s, however,...