So Friday, I got an offer from an itty bitty buyside firm to start Jan 1 as an analyst. It’s a small-cap value fund, and I’ll be focusing on international stocks. I have been obsessed with small-cap value investing ever since I read my first book on finance. The fact that I’m going to work on international stocks (an even less efficient part of the market, in my opinion) is just icing on the cake. This has taken me the better part of 18 months work, 6 of which I had to do without employment. I cannot begin to adequately describe how excited I am about this transition. Merry Christmas, indeed!
Congratulations! That is fantastic news and the timing couldn’t have been better. Happy holidays!
you’re starting work on a new years?
builders Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > you’re starting work on a new years? He’s absolutely thrilled to start ahead!
builders Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > you’re starting work on a new years? Clarification: I’ll start getting *paid* on new years. I will, of course, ring in the new year at my office, alarm clock set for 12:01.
Congrats! I’ve also been offered a new job in recent weeks, exciting times. Very best of luck in your new job. K
you a wild man supersadface
Congrats, that sounds like a great job. Which countries will you be focusing on? I look at international stocks from time to time and find that to be the most exciting aspect of the job. We never look at LatAm, but there are some interesting companies in Europe and Asia for sure.
Bromion- No particular countries of focus, but I can tell you our governance requirements generally exclude China and Russia. Yeah, this’ll mean missing out on some serious growth here, but we’re not comfortable with the risk. Plenty of other Asian, LatAm, and European companies make the cut. And you are right, some of these businesses are fascinating. What’s particularly interesting is how specialized some of these companies are because they’re so small. i.e. “We make knobs for manually-driven pencil sharpeners, but only in beige…” or, “We are currently the leading supplier of trade magazines catering to left-handed ballerinas…” and so on. -SSF
We also exclude Russia and China, and actually use them as contra-indicators. China is especially scary – half of the companies went public through sketchy reverse mergers and have never been properly vetted. The other half – anything that looks like it might actually be a legit company – are either crappy businesses or super high multiple go-go stocks. I find it to be practically impossible to do any meaningful research in China, as you never really know whether a company’s business model is actually based upon some guys brother having a handshake relationship with the local government official, or something stupid that doesn’t show up in the filings. Basically, where’s the beef? Europe scares me these days, but there are always one off opportunities in some places – we do some work in the UK and Scandinavian countries, and Germany is usually worth a look from time to time. I agree on the specialization, as many industries have never consolidated even in mature markets (not so true in Europe, but Asia is like Alice in Wonderland in some industries). You see things in Asia that literally don’t and couldn’t exist in the U.S. (not just product specific stuff, but entire businesses and industries). Pretty interesting. Anyway, congrats, that sounds awesome. If I ever decide to move firms, it will be to a position where I spend most or all of time evaluating international stocks.
Yay!
Congrats!
Congrats supersadface!
Congrats dude… this calls for seriously getting wasted… aaaalllll night long!
Congrats man, really happy for you. This deserves an all nighter in TF2