hmmmm....is there a pattern?

- I have to start by congratulating all those self-loathing Philadelphia sports fans who finally had a chance to celebrate (after 25 years) a sports champion from their city (Rocky is fictional you see).

The Phillies won the World Series with relative ease it seems like and kudos to them. Funny game baseball, a team with marginal pitching, playing in a box of a stadium, with a manager who can't speak more than five words coherently, and with an incompetent (previously atleast) GM ended up winning the World Series. I am by no means diminishing what the Phillies achieved. I love Howard, Utley, and Rollins and am glad they won. Hopefully this will calm the entire Philly area sports base for a few years.

-Speaking of the Phillies winning. Is there a pattern here? I left Philly this summer, and the Phillies won the World Series. I left Boston in 2003 and the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004. I am apparently not a good luck charm to these two cities!

-It's been a while since I posted here. As usual a lot is going on. We finished mid-terms and got our grades back. I got what I deserved (have not got finance yet) in all the mid-terms. I am not proud of my econ grade and hope to do well in the final.

-We finally had a week last week with no regular classes. It was relaxing, although we had to take what are called SIP classes (Sloan Innovation Period). I sat in a Macro-Econ SIP class taught by this exuberant MIT Econ prof. It was great! This guy has apparently studied 72 of the last economic crisis in the world (really) and he spent half the class telling us about what makes a crisis and how to avoid it. I am not sure if I believe in everything he said but he had good insights. I am definitely going to sign up for his Macro-Econ class next semester.

-I finally had time to reflect on what I want to pursue for my internship next summer. And I've made a decision and am happy about it. It does not involve Investment Banking or Sales and Trading. That's all I can say for now. (people read these blogs you know)

-I have a feeling that by the end of this month I am going to overwhelmed with non-class activities. I am in the organization teams for five of the biggest conferences organized by MIT in the next few months. It is going to be a challenge to juggle all those duties.

-I got referred by a classmate of mine to a VC firm from the west coast for a paid project in January. It was a good conversation with this VC firm and I am being kept in the loop. Interestingly I have spent the last few weeks reading up more about VCs. It is definitely a challenging and unique profession. The history of VC (less than 35 years old) is legendary with a long list of hits and misses. I talked to a high-profile person at MIT who knows VCs well and his opinion on the evolution of VCs in unique and one that I've not heard before.

-We had to submit our resumes this past Friday to the career development office. They are now on the resume book that goes out to firms (for a steep price apparently) to a huge list of firms. Recruiting season is officially in second gear now. People have started preparing for interviews in consulting, banking, and sales and trading by having mock interviews. A lot of second year's were seen reviewing resumes of the first year's this past week.

-The career development office posted a list of available internships for next summer just this week. From a first glance it seemed like most firms from last year are offering summer internships in all sectors. Let's see how that unfolds.

-There was a Halloween party this Friday and one of my classmates dressed up as me to the party. He thought it was funny. I was lame and did not dress up at all. But I had fun.

-George Soros gave a guest lecture at MIT this past week. I skipped class to attend it and it was well worth a class ditch. I came away very impressed with his chat. The guy was very philosophical in analyzing the economy, finance, and predictions. He sounded very Marxian which is good in my book. It was interesting when a young MIT undergrad called him a name (for shorting the pound in the 90s and ruining the British economy for a few years) and he calmly reacted by saying "I followed the rules and actually did them a favor".

-The markets. Ah yes, them. I am going to start writing more about the markets from my next post. I am going to make time to analyze the markets again and follow them more closely than I've been in the past 3 months.

later