I will like to thanks everyone for your sponsorship and tips here.
As a part of the sustainability in read.cash, I will redistribute what I had received over here to the authors and comments here.
While the amount may be small (to ensure that I could continue to tip, sponsor posting and etc), I hope that this little gestures of appreciation will help to keep everyone motivated to post more here.
Also if I do not come to your posts here, I am sorry as there are a lot to read here.
The memoir of an ex-investment manager Part 3
*****<Foreword>*****
I am very thankful for all the positive support I received in this blog. I will continue to work hard to ensure quality posts on this blog.
I will also like to take the moment to thanks my sponsor of my last post: ARTicLEE
The memoir of an ex-investment manager Series:
Part 1: https://read.cash/@Edwardcloud/the-memoir-of-an-ex-investment-manager-part-1-f8d05d42
Part 2:https://read.cash/@Edwardcloud/the-memoir-of-an-ex-investment-manager-part-2-31e69318
****The Decision****
It was almost five minutes before Richard announced, "Good job young man, I think that you had thrived well in the company even though your results are not as impressive as your seniors. But this takes time. Eileen will be revising your contract and you will be taking charge of the Asian Market with Ramesh.
Ramesh was the most senior and the one that whacked me the hardest during the mentorship period. While still stressed out, I think that it would still be beneficial to work with him.
It was in the afternoon when I got my revised contract from Eileen. I nearly fell off my chair. My fixed income fell by 50% and was replaced by the 20% commission from the profit made on my portfolio. I was profitable from the trade performed but based on the calculation, the 20% of the profit could not cover the 50% losses in my salary. At the end of the year, the company will give us another 10% profit to be shared between the investment managers.
Even though Richard did not confirm, we suspected that he has a 5% profit-sharing independence from our profit-sharing scheme.
****First day as a full-fledge investment manager****
I was pretty nervous on my first day of work, trying to imagine the mistakes that I could make and the scolding that I could get. When I reached the office, Ramesh was already there, offering a Starbuck coffee to me, and said, "Welcome aboard, from this day on, we are truly colleagues."
I was surprised to learn that I was not the first person to be trained by the company and I was the only one who makes it through to the trading desk. The reason why the mentorship was so tough was to ensure that the person makes it to the trading desk was hungry and could make enough money to keep up with the rest of them as we all had a common interest in terms of profit sharing.
In my internship, my total trading limit was at $1 million USD, now it had grown by 50 times to $50 million USD. It was both a pleasant surprise and pressure to have this much for trading. (Richard and the risk manager will be monitoring the trading p/l).
****My trading career in the first year.****
Guess what? As expected, my first month was falling short in terms of getting my income back to the point of my internship. This had continued till the 8th month where I had finally managed to exceed my internship income for the first time.
In terms of ranking, I was still firmly at the bottom against all my previous mentors but I had been closing gaps quickly. I was quick to discover that as long as we made a profit, Richard would very much leave us alone.
I was a scalper in the commodities so all the trades that I do generally do not last for over a day unless the situation turned on me yet it did not hit my stop loss set. For long-term investment, I had helped the firm to go into corporate bonds and dividend stocks as well as REITs.
At the end of the first year, the bonus I got could allow me to get a small three-bedder condominium. Truly shocked at the amount of money that my mentors could make.
In the second year as an investment manager, something had changed, causing a rift and eventually lead to me leaving the investment company.
<Pictures credit from Unsplash>
The memoir of an ex-investment manager Part 2
*****<Foreword>*****
I am very thankful for all the positive support I received in this blog. I will continue to work hard to ensure quality posts on this blog
I will also like to take the moment to thanks my sponsors: BMJC98, Carisdaneym2 and MizLhaine. This meant a lot for me as a new blog.
This is the second part of my memoir.
You can find the first part of my memoir below:
The memoir of an ex-investment manager Series:
Part 1: https://read.cash/@Edwardcloud/the-memoir-of-an-ex-investment-manager-part-1-f8d05d42
****The Decisive Interview****
Richard looked up and saw me. He came to me and give me a handshake. I cannot remember the actual conversations but it was something along the time during the interview, Richard and the managing director felt that while I am trained to be a risk manager, I was a better fit as an investment manager which they still have a position.
There was this line from Richard that struck my mind which very much later I realized that this is the quote from Richard Branson, "Look Edward when you have a chance to deal with a good opportunity, you say yes and you learn how to do it later."
By the time, I was out of Richard's office, I had a new job in the field of finance. I left the field of risk management into the field of investment.
****The Investment Team****
The investment company had a team of 7 trading desks with Richard as the chief investment officer. The investment team had a start-up capital of USD 50 million but Richard had managed to grow the portfolio into a couple of hundred million over the decades.
With 7 experienced investment managers with some in the company for decades, they need new blood to be a part of their renewal strategy. Richard had done a couple of interviews for the past few months, none of them are fitting to his requirements till I had come on board for the role of risk manager.
These 7 investment managers were trading around the clock from Monday to Friday coverage from the Japan Market to US Market. Unless there are any major holidays, we were expected to work even if it was a holiday in our country. Each manager was a specialist in the market specialize in a region and instrument. So these managers had worked in a different time zone. There were few and rare occasions where we can find the team ever come together.
They were to serve as my mentors. Because of the fact that they were to be my mentors, it meant that I will be put into shift mode at least during the initial training. I could still shiver when I remember the days of my training.
They were nickname by me as the 7 freaks. From the start of the training, I had been lectured by them almost every day. The experience was a daunting one. Do not get me wrong, they were not monsters or nasty. If you met them out of the trading office, they were some of the friendliest people around.
I was at a loss at one point when I was been lectured again. Not that I was making losses but I took the profit too early. The only lady in the 7 Freaks seems to see that I was losing confidence told me one day in the pantry during a lunch break that not to take the lectures to heart as this was the way that they had been trained and training people. The reason why they were so successful was because of the grilling that they had.
Under the 7 freaks, they had shown me the way to investment and trading. (Only 20% of their capital was stuck with investment while the remaining 80% went into trading. 20% of the profit made was been invested while the rest of the 80% were been used to fund the operation of the company, bonuses for the non-trading staff, trading commission, and profit-sharing for the investment manager.)
During my trainee days, I had to propose the instrument, product, entry price, take profit and cut loss price with the rationale why I should make the trade. Only through the mentors' approval, I could make execute the trade and square the trade based on the proposal. This lasted for six months. I had nearly 12 to 14 hours of trading sessions in each working day. In the last two months, they decided that they were sick of babysitting me and allocated five million dollars to execute the trading and another million to execute the investment component.
A couple of days after the six months stint, Richard called me into his office again. He was staring straight at my eyes hard without speaking for a long time. I felt that I was facing a tiger and was trying to shift my sight away from him. In my mind, I was thinking, I was doomed. Despite making a profit on my trading and investment, my results could not compare to the others. My six-month stint as an investment manager was going to end soon
**<To be continued>**
**<Picture credits from Unsplashed>**
I will like to give thanks to my first sponsor, bmjc98. Without her inspiring me to write my first post, I will still be struck. Not only that she had inspired me, she had supported me by coming to my blog. I had regarded her as someone whom I looked up to in the read community.
The memoir of an ex-investment manager Part 1
I had been working in the banks after my graduation. I remember that it was during the subprime crisis when I decided that I had enough of the banking industry. It was an employment agency that had sent me to an interview in a private investment company as a risk manager.
I could still remember that there were two gentlemen at the interview. Throughout the interview, I had told them what I was doing in the bank. They had asked a few questions on the trades that were performed by the banks and my role in it.
I heard nothing from them over the next two weeks, deep down I felt disappointed as I thought that I had what it takes to be a risk manager in that firm. I had continued to search for my job as I had given up hope on this job opportunity.
It was at a Friday morning interview where I had received a buzz from my phone. Out of respect for the interviewers, I did not pick up the phone. When the interview was finally done, I had made a callback to the number which was somehow familiar.
"Hi Edward," It was from the investment company. "The purpose of this call is to let you know that the position that we are looking for had been hired" You could imagine my face when she said that. I had already known that they had already found someone since they had not to get back to me within 2 weeks. So with a relatively cold tone, I replied, "Okay, thanks for letting me know that."
I was about to hang up the phone when Eileen continued, "Our investment director, Mr. Richard Tseng, if you remember is one of the two gentlemen who had interviewed you a fortnight ago, will like to meet you later at 3 pm for a discussion."
"Oh, what is the agenda?" I just want to make sure that I am not wasting my time where the time could be better spent elsewhere. "After the interview, Mr. Tseng thought that you are suitable for the role of the investment manager. He will like to have a further discussion with you."
Since I do not have any afternoon appointments, I decided that it would be a good idea to meet Richard to see what was in his mind. So I accepted the offer for an interview/discussion.
I had reached the office at 2.45 pm and been led directly into Richard's office. Unlikely the prestigious office that you see on television, Richard's office was outdated, full of annual reports and papers. I was pretty shocked by the sharp difference between drama and reality. At the desk was Richard who was still staring at the multiple screens when I came into the room.
***<To be continued>***
Post note: This is the first time I am doing a blog. There is a lot of technical aspects of things which I may still have trouble in having professional blogs like many here. This will likely be a general blog leaning close to general financial management. Thank you. All names had been changed to protect the privacy of the involved personnel.
**<Pictures credit from Unsplashed>**
Hi everyone,
This is a self introduction post of myself. So I do not expect it to be a high quality post or that people would tip me for it.
I am Edward Cloud. I am the trading and investment manager for a private family investment fund. I had more than a decade of trading experience. Hope to have an exchange of idea and information with the noise community here.
@Edwardcloud
