Many people expect IR to be communications majors who don’t know anything about finance. So the charter has given me some credibility.
When I was in corp dev, it helped me carve out my role as the analytical lead of the deal team.
^Huh, al lot of the IR and sales people I’ve met have very high quality backgrounds, in many cases equal to their front office brethren…
Perfect execution HP.
I think it’s the primary reason I got my last job. It also helped me get into a decent MBA program. In hindsight I should have gone to a better undergrad/networked/better internships but this program has definitely helped me indirectly. It’s not the golden ticket but sometimes you aren’t even in the game if you don’t have it.
This is the ultimate truth.
One LFHS event has taken the entire industry down.
No, the CFA hasn’t helped me pick up HCBs. I actually had to use my personality to get that done.
Junior analyst in what? Performance reporting, asset allocation? I can see where CFA L1 might help there…but if you’re on the buyside (which seems to be most people’s goal on this forum) it really doesn’t help that much. The whole charter really doesn’t help in terms of knowledge because it just scrapes the surface. It makes you more well rounded and credible to others…which has value, but the value is not in the education.
yall also got to mention how long ago you received the charter
I think the CFA charter actually lends some degree of credibility. A Lot of people working on Wall Street are only there because their banker dad got them a job at age 22. The charter helps to distinguish you from those (generally not-so-bright) nepotism hires.
research dept at a small firm putting together the portfolios that the financial advisors invest clients money in and answering questions from the financial advisors. Still kinda new so please excuse my ignorance.
Most of the IR people I know are extremely hot women that like to go to strip clubs.
Sounds like good people to work with.
1000 hours and 3000 pages of text definitely has an influence whether you think so or not. For me, that influence continues to be positive. I don’t buy into the I’m never going to use that information camp. That was never the intent. A broad shallow exposure to your discipline is invaluable. At least when CDSs blow up, you have the basic understanding required to understand what is happening. Or modern portfolio theory might not be your thing, but at least you know it may be a large influence on pricing as a population ages.
I had a math teacher once that would test for some very rote understanding . Pure memorization. I found that odd for a math class. Her point was, yeah, you might not remember any of this tomorrow, but since I made you memorize it once, you will at least recall that it exists if you ever need the information and you might even realize it can be useful.
I was already well established in my career (business valuation) when I earned my charter, but it certainly expanded my knowledge base and brings instant credibility most of the time.
I think the CFA charter actually lends some degree of credibility. A Lot of people working on Wall Street are only there because their banker dad got them a job at age 22. The charter helps to distinguish you from those (generally not-so-bright) nepotism hires.
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I think this is a lot rarer than most people think. The Street has this reputation of being impossible to break into and the only way is to have an uncle in the business. Far from it. I do know a couple of people like that but they are in the small minority. Most people I know just worked very hard. This is a broad sample set I’m drawing from including people at top funds, people on the Forbes 30 Under 30, some of the youngest fund managers in the country, etc. – all the people you would expect had a huge helping hand.
^ Yeah, but that’s referencing the most successful guys who will naturally be talented and hardworking, not necessarily the broader set of the WS population.
My impression is that a vast majority of finance people were just recruited out of college into IB or other analyst programs. After that, they end up doing different things. I believe family connections can be useful in helping to focus a person’s ambitions in finance. For instance, if your parent encourages you to find finance internships at a younger age than other people, this will help you later when you want to find a better job. However, with the exception of some rare cases, I do not think family connections have a strong direct influence over entry level recruitment.
It is tempting to dismiss successful people as having benefited from nepotism or other preferential treatment. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, successful people are just hardworking or talented, or took the correct steps early in their lives.
This is analogous to college admisssions, where the legacy effect is not as strong a factor in admissions as people assume. However, having parents who attended prestigious universities usually means that they will nurture you and be a good role model, leading to indirect advantageous in college admissions.
I was going through the program when my kids were in grade school. I honestly believe my kids now have great study habits because they saw what I went through. I didn’t pass any level first time out, so they also saw my determination and my ability to pick myself up and do it again. Beyond any professional worth, how my children approach school work is probably my biggest benefit.
A great example of why people say the CFA charter is nice to have but doesn’t really do a whole lot for you mechnically in terms of landing a job is the vickycool thread.
she was a L3 candidate, passed L2 with the ton of knowledge there, and started the tread with: how do you actually calculate sales?
definitely useful things to know in the curriculum, but it’s still not on-the-job hands-on work valuation type experience that people who are hiring want to see. It’s why work exp will always >>>> passign CFA exams.
So, you have your own asset management firm. Will your money managers have, or be in the process of getting, their Charter? In my case, yes. The reason I got mine was that I had the attitude that if I knew as much as I thought, the exams should be no big shake. And if I ended up struggling with the curriculum, there was the evidence I should be going through the program. Once again, objective evidence of an absolute minimum level of fitness is the goal and what is needed in this industry. The government doesn’t require much, but we can pick up the slack. Most professions require some sort of demanding demonstration of fitness, finance should be no different. There is a lot of talk of what the charter can do for “me.” I think it should be more about what can the charter do for the public. Yeah, call me Pollyannish, but if someone has not sought out some sort of objective measure of their trade, I will not be allocating any of my AUM to them. Work experience and university education are not enough, Too much bias, especially if you are an unknown to me. I want evidence that you have demonstrated the basics. Of course there are exceptions. WB can manage some of my money. Wait, he already does.
In order to be fair, you were pretty cruel to her, and you never answered her question. All you did was say, “LOL–you can’t forecast sales? Hahahahahahahaha!!!” Which wasn’t really helpful.
And related to nepotism–I think a lot of your success isn’t directly related to who your daddy is, but rather, that you realize the myriad of options available to you, and you understand that hard works earns you success. EG - I grew up a very small, very blue-collar town. White-collar jobs were definitely the exception, and nobody really knew how to get them. In fact, virtually every “white-collar” person who lived in my small town had moved there from somewhere else. I didn’t even know it was possible to make six figures without being a drug runner or doing something else equally illegal.