Teacher Retirement System

Summer 2011 Site Review

Position: Analyst Intern
Student: Economics Junior

A typical day at an investment fund, in Austin, is not like your typical portrayal of Wall Street in movies and in other media. While people in investment management are all very busy, there is not any yelling, no blatant stepping on other’s toes, or any emphatic gyrations when performance exceeds expectations. Life at an investment fund is more subtle and relaxed. The hours are shorter than on Wall Street, fifty to sixty hours, as opposed to eighty to one hundred in investment banking.  In my opinion, the people on the investment management side of finance are a bit more intelligent and focused on seeking the truth in the market rather than just making things happen as in the case of investment bankers who profit from action rather than significant analysis.

When I get in the office in the morning, around 8:00 AM, I check my email  to make sure that I do not have any meetings that I have to attend  for the day or any emails that I need to respond to that came in either earlier in the morning or after I left the past night.  While I check my email, I check the markets in order to understand the trends over the past few days. I check the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index, the European FTSE, the German DAX, the French CAC 40, the Japanese Nikkei 225, and the Chinese Hang Seng.  As I check the market throughout the day, I take notes about the highs and lows of the day. I am attempting to chart the patterns over the next five years just for practice in order to understand general trends in different markets. Even with five years of performance data, does not mean that I will be able to predict the market. A joke in finance is that there are people who know they cannot time the market and there are those that do not know…yet. That is, until they are burned and they enter the former group.

After that I attend to my work, depending on what my assignment is. I read research, check for exchange traded funds that contain stocks I may be interested in, thoroughly investigate those equities and write reports on why I think these stocks will outperform the market and how I came to that conclusion based on my research.

I usually stay in the office until about 9pm. At night the office is nearly empty and it is easier to concentrate on the my current analysis . On average, I work around sixty hours a week and I come in on the weekends for a couple of hours to finish up work. The difference between other’s job’s and my career, is that I enjoy what I do so I do not mind coming in on the weekends. It is the intellectual curiosity that will keep you afloat in good times and in the bad.