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>