where to begin?

well, some personal ego-stroking first:

- Someone posted on our class message board today that there was a picture of some of our classmates in today's Boston Globe and also that I was in the picture (see link below).

So it's not exactly how you want to be pictured in a newspaper. I caught some flak for not having my name card displayed ("you too cool for name cards?"). But we digress. The article has some quotes from some of my classmates about how what's happenin' on Wall Street is going to affect recruiting etc. And we all do look bored/concerned in that picture. In our defense it was 6-8 pm non-class seminar on "Buy-Side state of affairs". And it was a long day.

But it is not a flattering picture, that's for sure.

kondum picture in the Boston Globe

- Today was another long day at school. As part of our first semester, we have a course called "Communication for Managers". Apparently the perception is that Sloan grads dont come out of school as polished so this course. Today we had a 2h session in which my group had to give two separate impromptu speeches in front of the group. The topics are revealed 30 sec before you talk. So it is real impromptu. I liked it. I have no problem getting in front of people to speak but what I am trying to improve is thinking when I speak so that I can modify my presentation as we go along.

- I am participating in a "Stock Pitch" competition this weekend at school. My team, three strong, has to go in front of an audience and pitch our analysis of a stock that they chose for us (Dick Sporting Goods). The top 2 teams will get to represent Sloan at other contests. I am new at this but if I want a career in Investment Management this is how the interview process is going to be, so I better get used to and get good at this. We started prepping for this. Let's see how it turns out.

-My friend Sara visited Boston this weekend and we hung out on Saturday eve. It was great to spend time with her.

-Some of my teammates are calling this week "Hell Week". We have 5 HWs due, 3 presentations, and two company visits. The recruitment madness begins officially this week with Goldman Sachs visiting first on Wednesday. I am not looking forward to wearing a suit. But I have to. dang!

-I am happy to report that amidst all this madness I am keeping to my gym schedule and playing squash twice a week. And the squash is intense and am loving it. Disappointingly my eating habits have gone down the drain. We have free lunch every day and there is pizza or burritos. Not healthy. Add beer to the mix in the evenings! I started drinking at noon on Saturday and Sunday. And had 2 beers today. ahhhh, you gotto love school!

-Dont know if any of you know or heard about Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). LTCM was the superstar hedge fund run by former Salomon Brothers and MIT/Harvard Nobel Prize winning economists in the mid 90S. They returned 400% cummulative in 4 years and then went on to bring Wall Street to it's knees in 1998. Before this month, that was the biggest catastrophe in the past 20 years. Anyway, last wednesday one of the big players from LTCM (Eric Rosenfeld) was at Sloan addressing us. It was cool to listen to this guy speak. He and LTCM are the subject of a cool book called "When Genius Fails" which every Finance person has read. I had read before coming to Sloan and it was great to hear this guy speak in person.

He had great insights into trading and what needs to be done in today's markets.

Allrite kids, I have a 8:30 am Accounting class tomm.

later

Jeeezaaaz, so much happenin'!

Where to start? I would not be exaggerating if I said we just went through a pretty freakin' HISTORIC week in the world of finance. Some are calling it a pivotal point in the history of finance. Remains to be seen. Here is what has been happenin':

-There are no more pure US Investment Banks. Just read that statement again. Wow!

-Oil went up $25 today alone (before settling down). Gold is back in the 900s and the US$ took a whooping. All in all a crazy day in the markets.

-It was a holiday today at MIT. Why you ask? "Anti-Suicide day". Yup that's right. Earlier this decade some undergrad kids could not take the stress of the first year and hence solved the problem by jumping off the roofs. So the school decided to issue pass/fail in the first year for undergrads. And have more than one 3 day weekend every month. So the holiday. I'll take it.

-Last week was fun. Andrew Lo (fin prof at Sloan) had a trading competition for interested Sloan students on Friday. You can form teams from your class and trade with each other using a Sloan designed interface. They were trying to create a market using all of us to demonstrate how things work. My team was pretty good. We turned $10000 into $31,500 and ended up 7th. The team that came first had $35,000. We should won it but I made a mistake at the very beginning that cost us more than 10K. I placed a "Market Buy" instead of "Limit Buy" that ended up screwing us. Oh well, atleast it was a good experience. There are some sharp kids in my class.

-Our Econ prof is not exactly helping me considering that my Econ is weak. I think my Macro-Econ is pretty solid but Micro is weak. And we have Micro-Econ this semester. Our guy is pretty smart (I hear he is under 30 and a prof of econ at MIT which is not too shabby). Luckily some of my team members are good with Econ.

-I keep meeting interesting people in class everyday. There is this kid from Brazil whose dad owns an energy company and just won a contract to supply wind energy in Brazil for the first time. This kid and his brother (a Sloan Alum) are going to run the wind farm! How cool is that? I am trying to organize a trek to Brazil to visit the farm. Nothing like visiting a new technology firm and see it from the time it is starting.

-I have to make a serious decision on whether to worry about grades or not give a hoot. Like for example this week, we have this great conference called "Emerging Technologies Conference" at MIT which is going to bring some pretty freakin' cool innovators in different sectors to campus. Of course the talks I want to go to clash with my class schedule. I am like, screw it, why should I care about grades. I am here to learn not fill my GPA. Let's see what I end up doing.

Here is the link to EmTech, lots of great talks
http://www.technologyreview.com/emtech/08/schedule.aspx

-My decision on career choice post-Sloan is still pending. I am still talking to different people in the areas that I am targetting and have decided to give myself 2 more weeks to decide.

-On the ironic side, we have the artists formerly known as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merril Lynch coming to campus in 10 days for recruiting informationals. I am signed up for them but what do you think the odds are that they will be canceled.

-On another cool side, I am part of the organization committee for the MIT Energy Night to be held on October 10 at the MIT Museum. I have been put in charge of picking cool renewable energy outdoor displays. I have been given freedom to pick whatever I think is appropriate. So far there has been interest from GM to display their Chevy Volt and from Honda for their FCX. Both dont use any gas. I am trying to get a solar panel display as well. Should be fun.

-oh yeah, we are partying quite a bit as well. I am spending money like it's nobody's business! I need to get hold of my expenses.

Decision Time

It's kinda ironic that a momentous day in the US Financial Markets coincides with a tough career decision for me post-Sloan. It is easy to say that what happened this weekend led me to this so called fork in the road but it is not true at all.

We had a whole day last Friday of career workshops (mentioned briefly in my earlier post) and I went and sat in on two sessions: Investment Management and Investment Banking. And I have to say Investment Management looked and sounded very good. Investment Banking did too. One thing I did not attend was the Venture Capital/Private Equity session. Subsequently I talked to two of my classmates (pretty knowledgeable ones) and I got great feedback as to why I have a great shot at getting into a Venture Capital firm.

So Friday brought a lot of confusion and self-introspection. I brooded over this all weekend and talked to folks in various areas. It all boils down to what I want from a job right after my MBA. That simple. And the answer is quite simple actually. Transferable skills set that can someday help me run a business.

And that is how I've arrived at this fork in the road: what to concentrate on for internship recruiting starting next month. (a) Trading desk position, (b) Venture Capital, or (c) Investment Management. I can't try to recruit for all three since it is highly time intensive and not productive. I need to basically drop one of the three and what is it going to be.

I am going to start sitting down with people who have careers in all three and try to get relevant information out of them this week. And then decide. Will be an interesting week.

Death of the Investment bank?

Like VS Naipaul claimed 10 years ago that the Novel as we know is dead, the same can probably be said for Investment Banks on Wall Street starting today.

I obviously have not followed the financial markets for long but even with my limited knowledge what is transpiring today (Lehman talks of Bankruptcy and Merril Lynch bought over by BofA and AIG in deep trouble) seems to be historic. And if you listen to some pundits on CNBC they are calling that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley better go find buyers next week else they are in trouble as well.

What this means for us B school students interested in careers in Banking is not clear at this point but the prospects can't be that great. The market is going to be flooded with people who lost their jobs from this carnage and banks will perceivably cut down or be more prudent in hiring from here on for the short-term.

I am interested in hearing from one of our Finance Professors (who is a superstar in that area) about the impact of this on the markets and the state of the economy in the next few months. I think I will sit in an extra class tomm just to hear him speak about this.

I knew something was not right when I got a call from a trader at a big European Investment Bank last night. This friend had earlier asked me to come over and spend a day on the trading floor anytime I wanted. But he called last night to let me know that apparently no one other than employees are now allowed on the trading floor considering the state of the markets now. He told me to wait until October or November. This was before I had heard of the Lehman and Merril mess. Who knows how things are going to be after this.

I expected the dollar to have a mini-crash this evening but it is holding up reasonably ok. Maybe Monday will bring more bad news.

Interesting times!

It's all true

I heard a lot of stories from kids who got into business school about how it is all about time management. And me being the ever cynical guy did not buy any of it. Well, I humbly have to eat it now. There is no other way to put it. I've not had time to breathe in the past 5 weeks or so. I am hoping I get better with managing my time soon 'cause in addition to the avalanche of activities we have now companies start visiting Sloan campus on October 1 (Goldman as they should is the first firm on campus).

So briefly an update on what has been happenin' since I left Philly on Aug 3:

-The Move: We got stuck on the road for 4h in CT. Got in at 1 am and stayed up until 5am unloading stuff from our UHaul. And our apt was not exactly clean when we walked in. Took us 2 IKEA visits, 10 visits to Target, and 4 visits to Staples to settle in with furniture.

-House-warming party: We had a BBQ party at our apartment in the middle of August. And 150 kids from our class showed up. We somehow fit everyone in the tiny drive way and our apt. Cleaning up afterwards took a while.

-Roommates: Both my roommates are cool. We have had no issues yet. And I dont foresee us not getting along into the future. Both of them are OCD like I am and reasonably clean. And very laid-back.

-Classmates: Interesting bunch. I love it that they are very laid-back and grounded. Most of them atleast. We have one former Hedge Fund owner, one student who is a descendent of one of the premier automotive families of the world, and a host of interesting characters. We also have those kids who like to hear themselves talk in class. Seems like we can't avoid them anywhere.

-Orientation week: This was the highlight of the first four weeks of school. I usually can't stand team-building exercises but what they made us do during this one day of orientation was great. They took us to this outdoor center and made us go through a bunch of exercises. We had to build a real raft and paddle to the middle of a lake from scratch, climb up a 50 ft rope, and a host of great events. They were introspective and fun.

-Classes: I have 6 courses. I am enjoying finance but our ocean (the whole class is divided into groups of 70. each group is called an ocean) does not have the best finance prof at Sloan. Our accounting prof is great. I find two courses boring: Organizational process and Communication. Although parts of communication class are fun. This past week I had to go in front of the class and sell them an idea-I had 10 min to prepare. And then they asses you in front of the whole class. I am reasonably ok with impromptu speeches but would like to get better and smoother.

-Extra-curricular activies: There is no shortage of these. I am starting a Squash Club at Sloan and have a small group that plays regularly already. I am active in the Energy Club and the Sales and Trading club. oh yeah, I have been drinking almost every single day since mid-August. (Except today).

-HWs: I hate homeworks and we have a lot of them already. I was indoors all day last Saturday reading and preparing for class.

-Recruiting: I made a trip to NYC to meet a friend who is a trader at a big Ibank. He invited to come and spend a day on the trading floor with him. I was dense and did not do it after talking to some of my classmates who warned me about going to recruit this early. I should not have listened to them. oh well.

-Confused: Yeah I thought I was set on what career I wanted to pursue before coming to Sloan but we just had a career day and it left me all confused. Now I want to pursue Investment Management, Investment Banking, and Venture Capital. Not good. I need to narrow my choice soon.

-Scooter: I love it that I am using my scooter everyday here. And guess what there are hundreds of scooter users in Boston.

allrite, I need to get to bed. Have to get up early on Sunday and plan for next week. How exciting!