- Good afternoon everybody!
Welcome to The Business Society.
This is our first
meeting for the semester.
Thank you for spending your
afternoon here with us.
My name is Professor Kasomenakis.
I teach the business
classes, I teach accounting,
and I'm also the faculty coordinator
of The Business Society.
And Linda Meltzer is also the coordinator.
And my officers are here some where,
I don't know where they are but anyway
Samuel, Vanessa, and Raelynn.
They are the officers of the club.
So just to give an idea behind
the mission of The Business Society,
it's basically to give our students,
our business students, a better insight
into the real business world.
So what we do is, we invite speakers
in different areas of business
in which they're experts in.
So for example in our previous meeting,
We had somebody come in to talk
about managing one's credit.
We also had somebody to talk about how to
establish a business
online, like E-commerce,
how to write a resume, a cover letter.
So these are just some of the meetings
that we had in the past and
of course, many, many more.
Just to give you an idea
on some of the topics.
So, we will have additional meetings,
one's scheduled in October.
And we're going to have somebody talking
about managing stress, believe it or not.
You figure well what does
that have to do with business?
Well I'm sure as a business student,
you know, when you're taking final exams
or when you're going for a job interview,
it's only natural to feel stress.
So this lady, she has this business,
she's into nutrition, and she's going
to help you how to manage your stress
naturally while you're under stress.
So that should be quite interesting.
That's in October, and the
next one is in November,
and we're gonna have somebody
from Chase talk about the differences
between credit cards and debit cards,
you know, the dangers
of having a debit card,
what to watch for, how
to protect yourself.
So we have our website,
I wrote it up here.
This is our website, okay,
so if you're interested
in our future meetings you
can just go onto that website
and you can make a reservation to come.
And also, we tape all of our meetings,
so there's a tab on the site
that says Video Archives,
so you can get all the information
from our previous meetings.
So check it out, okay?
So let's start our meeting.
Our speaker, and I'm so
glad that she's here.
She is a professor for
the business department,
she teaches finance,
law, business management.
She's a licensed attorney,
and she had extensive experience
as a security analyst
in the Wall Street area.
She worked for firms
such as Salomon Brothers,
Drexel Lambert, UBS, just to name a few,
and I'm sure many others.
So, her name is Professor Linda Meltzer,
so let us give her a nice round
hand of applause to welcome her.
(applause)
- Thank you, Professor Kasomenakis.
And it's a pleasure to talk today
about A Day in the Life
of a Wall Street Analyst.
Wall Street's getting,
well from time to time
has had a bad name, sometimes deservedly.
Today I'm here to talk about some of
the positive sides of
being on Wall Street.
Just one caveat, you're
here on false pretenses,
it says A Day in the Life
of a Wall Street Analyst,
there's no such thing as a day
that looks like any other day.
Being a Wall Street Analyst is
very, very different from day to day.
A little bit about my background,
you've heard I've spent
17 years on the street,
at Drexel and UBS for the most part,
Drexel Burnham Lambert, which
had gone bankrupt in 1990,
and then a couple of
other firms in between,
all of which have closed,
and then finally UBS.
I was a telecom analyst,
which meant that I covered
a group of telecom stocks
within a telecom industry.
Those names are like
AT&T, Verizon, Sprint,
some of the competitors
of those big names,
and it was also at the
beginning of the internet,
in the 1990s, when the industry just
blossomed, mushroomed, and exploded,
and created a lot of new names.
And some of my students know that many
of the managements I knew and worked with,
and got to know are now convicted felons,
so if you wanna leave,
the exit's in the back,
but I was never convicted.
Okay, so what are the
goals for the presentation?
We're gonna talk about what
a security analyst does,
what it can't do in terms of regulation,
the legal restrictions.
What are the positives and negatives,
for those of you who are interested
in maybe entering the
industry, we'll go over that.
And I should also point
out, there are multiple
career paths to success on Wall Street,
and we'll talk about that.
Along the way I may offer some of
the personal stories, or
war stories, that I've had.
So what does an analyst do,
what does a securities analyst do?
Generally speaking, I
come from the sales side,
I worked for the investment bank,
or the brokerage house,
but there are also analysts that come from
the commercial banks or the mutual funds,
and they also do the same things.
The areas that they focus on are research,
marketing, they market their ideas,
communicate with clients,
the clients could be
institutional investors
or retail investors.
They do a lot of writing,
and I skipped over financial modeling.
They do a lot of financial models,
forecasts, valuation work, and the writing
are the reports that combine everything.
And of course they have to comply
with rules and regulations.
Security analysts also work with
the sales force within their firm,
and the traders within their firm,
and they also work the
investors outside the firm.
You wear many hats and you
have many different masters.
So digging a little bit deeper,
what's fundamental research,
and that's a big part of the job.
Sometimes it could be as much
as 50 to 60% of your time.
You have to know your
industry and your stocks.
You dig deep, you analyze the companies,
understand their past financial statement,
but understand how to forecast their
financial statements,
the income statement,
the balance sheet statement, it changes.
You also have to know their products,
their services, what they offer now.
What are their customers like?
What markets are they in?
What's the competition like,
who are the companies
greatest competitors?
What are the trends and what's on
the horizon in terms of potential changes?
And I'm referring to telecom
because that's my experience,
but it could be a clothing manufacturer,
a lot of analysts cover the retail sector.
And they make revenue and margin
and earnings forecasts for each company,
for 2012, 2013, but know
also the next quarter.
What's the next quarter going to bring?
And also some analysts
do 10 year forecasts.
A lot of times I used to
wake up in the morning,
I didn't know what the day would bring,
let alone 10 years from now.
So it was hard to think
about 10 year forecasts.
What else did we do?
We would look at, we'd
make channel checks,
we would dig for information
that my competitors,
other analysts, didn't have,
so I could provide something new.
Go to trade shows, go to company events.
While telecom was a hot area in
the 80s, 90s, and in the 2000s,
the big topic of areas now
are companies like the social media.
So some examples I wanted to point out,
for example, if you were
an analyst covering Apple,
you would probably cover the
hardware or the software,
you'd wanna look at what kinda shipments
their products, the iPhone,
the iPads, are doing.
Are they better or worse than expected?
What about the new product introductions,
the recent iPhone five,
did it meet expectations,
was there a wow factor about that phone,
relative to the iPhone four?
What about the CEO, Tim Cook,
is he standing up to
expectations for the investors
who bought Apple when
they knew Steve Jobs?
When Steve Jobs passed away,
which is almost a year ago,
the stock got very
shaky, and oddly enough,
after it found its sea legs,
it became one of the best
stocks on the exchanges.
So it out-performed the market,
even in the aftermath of
Steve Jobs passing away.
Other names some analysts would do work on
are companies like Google,
and compare it to Apple,
and maybe compare it to Facebook.
And they would look at online ad growth,
that's where Google gets
most of its valuation from.
But what new is Google doing?
And there's more competition now,
trying to corner the
market on online ad growth.
So how is Google
expanding internationally?
So analysts would do the
work and look at that.
What about the patent wars,
how does that affect the stock?
And then finally, the
third day might offer,
the slides are in the back
and I moved this forward.
Facebook was a very hot
IPO for about 20 minutes.
It came out at $38 a share,
and you probably have been watching
it go all the way down below 20.
Now it seems to be
coming back a little bit.
What happened, what are
the reasons for that?
We could spend probably hours
just talking about Facebook,
but expectations that Facebook
would be talking about new products,
which hasn't yet materialized,
or the fact that CEO, Mark Zuckerberg,
was largely invisible until last week
got a lot of people very scared.
Okay, so looking at what
is fundamental research,
we would visit the company management,
make calls to the company,
and often we would know the company
better than some of the company would.
Some members of the company.
We'd look at SEC, make sure
that we know it as soon
as anyone else does.
But the big point was that
we had to find creative ways
to get new information,
be very resourceful.
My research director said being
like a junkyard dog was how
to be a successful analyst,
and be curious about getting
value added information.
And then after we got all this information
we would share it,
communicate with our clients.
Those who owned the stock,
those who were thinking
about owning the stock,
or those who might wanna sell the stock.
We would first start the day,
usually at 6:30 or seven
o'clock in the morning
and I would often speak
to our sales force,
both in domestic, in the
U.S., or in New York markets,
but whatever I said would go
across our system to Japan,
to Tokyo, to Beijing, to Sao Paulo,
any financial center we would have
sales people taking down notes
on what I would say on a particular stock.
And they would make calls to clients,
to my clients and their clients,
and then I would start
making calls to clients.
We would call often and
with new information,
and it actually was called
Dialing for Dollars.
And we would disseminate information
that would move the
stock either up or down,
but that's how you would make money
for your firm and also for your clients.
And we'd also stay visible.
It was very, very hard to stay
visible when you were wrong.
If you had recommended a stock,
which means put a buy recommendation,
and you recommended the stock at 50,
and then you had to constantly be in front
of your sales force recommending it all
the way down to 40 or 35,
you would wanna stay visible.
The last thing you wanna do is hide,
once you hide, good chance you
were going to lose your job.
And we used to speak to the media a lot.
We would speak to CNBC or speak
to Wall Street Journal, or New York Times.
If you Googled my name, you would
have to use my middle initial,
for some reason I used my middle initial,
you would find that I
spoke to a lotta papers,
and I find, every once
in a while I Google,
and I pound the table on a stock
and say strong buy
recommendation on the company,
and I'm embarrassed to
say that I was one of
the strongest bulls on a
company named WorldCom,
which has since gone bankrupt,
the CEO is serving a 25 year term,
so it's a little embarrassing
to know that I was recommending it.
And we would make financial forecasts,
basically, as I said, on revenues,
on EBITDA, which is
earnings before interest,
depreciation, and
amortization, and earnings.
What would those numbers be?
And as important as that was,
we had to look at our forecast
relative to valuation,
relative to the price of the stock.
So was the stock
over-valued or under-valued?
You had to look at it
on an everyday basis.
And so I would have a lot
of buy recommendations
in the time frame when
telecom stocks were very hot,
and my earnings estimates
were constantly being raised,
so the stock always looked cheap.
We also look at price to earnings.
Price to earnings is a multiple
you often hear analysts talk about.
And also compare it to the growth rate.
So if many companies, the
average multiple would be 15,
$150 stock, $15 in earnings,
or $10 in earnings would get
you a multiple in 10 to 15.
But if it had a growth rate of 25%,
that was a very cheap stock,
and so we'd always be looking
at whether it's cheap.
Now, writing reports, it still is,
but when I was an
analyst, it was very much
a publish or perish environment,
and that was a way of staying visible.
You had to stand behind whatever
recommendations you were making.
Being an analyst means that you
had to become an expert in the field.
You had to know it
better than anyone else,
or better than most.
You'd focus on basically
10 or 20 companies
in the industry, and lotta moving parts,
so it was often a 24 by seven type of job.
You would write in depth reports,
you'd write short pieces,
you were constantly
publishing ongoing estimates,
changing estimates, up or down,
changing your opinions
based on new information.
And you would often hear how other
analysts would follow each other.
Now, most of the time,
and you'll hear this,
one of the knocks on Wall Street
is that analysts either
have two recommendations,
a buy recommendation or a hold
they're afraid to put a sell on.
Very brave to a put a sell on the company
and I have to say that I
had it a couple of times,
and you feel the wrath from
a number of different groups.
If you have a sell on the company,
it means you're telling
clients that what you
recommended before, you
now want them to sell.
Becomes a very lonely world.
The company hates you because you're
telling them to sell the stock,
your clients that you
once told them to buy it
now hate you because they're
faced with selling it,
and usually when you go
from a buy to a sell,
stock reverses very quickly.
I had one example.
I had a very strong buy recommendation
on a company which has now merged
with other companies, but it was MCI.
And it was a competitor to AT&T.
And they missed earnings after the close
and so sometime around
five o'clock that night
I knew I was going to change
the rating from a buy,
and I was going to go to a hold.
But decided that it was
going to take a long time
for the company to recover
so I went to a sell.
That $30 stock went to 17.
Very, very difficult, my sales force
had to make a very difficult call,
the company was angry at
me, clients were angry.
Left the sell for awhile, and
a very unusual thing happened.
The CFO called me that day and said,
can't use curse words, but what the F
are you doing to my stock?
And he said I want you to fly down
as soon as possible to meet with me,
I wanna go over your thought process,
why, you were the only one
who went from buy to hold.
I'm sorry, buy to sell.
When I went down there,
it was a few days later,
I took the six o'clock A.M. flight,
so I had to get up at four,
and I go down and I was
rushing that morning
and when I get into his office,
and this guy, by the
way, this guy is now CEO
of General Motors, I should mention that,
but very important guy at MCI,
and he puts me down, and he said, ugh,
this is exactly the crap appointment
I didn't wanna have today.
So he sits down,
and I realized when I
opened up my pocketbook,
the only pen I had was from a trade show
that AT&T had given me, their competitor.
And so he sees the logo,
and my thumb's over it,
and he said, what are you doing,
and I said, it's the only pen I have.
So he takes it, he throws
it across the room,
and he said I'll be right back,
and he comes back with boxes of MCI pens.
He goes, now you learn your lesson.
Actually, it turned out a few weeks later
that I had an opportunity
to raise the stock,
but he said you did a very bold move,
and I got a lot of accolades for it.
I don't recommend it
all the time to do it,
you have to be right, and as I said,
this CFO became CEO of MCI
and ultimately he's getting
some credit for the GM turnaround.
So that's good.
Okay, compliance, I wanted
to mention this a little bit.
We talk about what analysts do,
but increasingly, it's more important
to know what analysts can't do.
And it's how they disclose information,
non-public information particularly.
They communicate with the public,
and so it's important that
whatever they communicate
with is that it's already
been publicly disclosed.
A new rule that became
very difficult for all
analysts to work with is
the Fair Disclosure rule.
The FD rule, came out in 2000.
Made it much tougher for analysts
to find even a sliver of information,
and basically it means everyone gets
the same information at the same time.
Which sort of flies in the face
of what an analyst is supposed to,
is finding that incremental information.
So you're somewhat between
a rock and a hard place.
The day after the rule changed,
I took 20 of the largest
institutional investors
to meet with Quest CEO Joe Nacchio,
who, by the way, had come from AT&T
and went to a competitor,
and no one knew how the
rule would actually work,
but I had these 20 investors,
very important, largest investors,
they owned 80%, the 20 80 rule,
they owned 80% of Quest Communications.
And the CEO happened to be,
he always talked about rumors,
so every time the CEO would say something,
you'd hear someone in the background
who was taping the call, his lawyers,
would then say uh oh, Joe did it again,
and every time he did it,
the FD rule meant that
they had to put out an 8-K,
which is an SEC report,
which legally had to go
out to everyone else,
everyone would get it about the same time.
While I'm in this room,
hosting these 20 analysts
with the CEO, I kept getting called out
by my trading desk, what's going on there,
Quest keeps coming out with more news.
And the stock became so volatile
that they had to halt trading that day.
So, that's how the FD rule started out,
it's gotten a little bit more stable.
Question is, and a lotta people ask,
especially in an environment that doesn't
particularly like people
who are from Wall Street,
why are analysts important,
why do companies or the
clients value analysts?
Can't anybody do their own work?
Well, a couple points here,
from the company point of view,
the analyst may know more about
what's affecting the
stock than the CEOs do.
I used to get calls
from CEOs all the time,
do you know why my stock's
going up two points,
or why it's going down two points?
The other key point is that analysts
would help to make the company
or make the stock a more efficient market.
They would be spreading the word,
introducing more clients to the company,
they would increase
the number of investors
that were willing to own the company,
and by publishing estimates,
they set the bar for expectations,
so people knew what to expect.
And then finally they would
provide third party validation.
This is particularly important
for companies that are
going from the initial public
offering into the market.
At UBS, when I was a telecom analyst,
we were bringing a company public
called Concentric Networks,
and it basically was an internet,
it was new type of telecom company
that was using the internet,
and storing data and web hosting.
It was a very tiny company,
the whole company was about 50 million.
Their sales were about eight
million, but growing very fast.
They were very, very dependent
on coverage and support,
and because the shares
traded in very low volumes,
anything that was said about the company
would move the pendulum
on the stock very high,
and the company's management
would love when the companies go up.
I could never get a phone call back
when the stock would go down,
and so analysts were also valued
by institutional and retail clients.
They would assist and
educate some of the investors
about the investment
merits of the company,
so if you couldn't get a call back
from the CEO or the CFO,
analysts would be there at least
to hold the hands of some
of the large investors.
That basically would help
to bring some new data into
the data flow and help
investors to make money.
I mentioned before that to become
an analyst there's multiple career paths.
Those of you who are
just staring out at QCC,
you're business students,
you may think about
well, I'm not really sure
where I wanna go, but you
may actually think about,
later on, that you really
like the finance world.
You like accounting, but you
also like the finance world.
One of the things you should
know about Wall Street
is that they're one of
the largest employers,
particularly in the New York market.
So, how do you get a job as a multiple,
how do you get a job?
Well, you could start as an associate
or a junior analyst and
some of my associates
and junior analysts, and
that was just starting out,
with bonuses were making
100, $200,000 a year.
Or you could start out on Wall Street
after you've worked in an industry.
You get to know the apparel industry,
or the telecom industry,
or you've worked for Disney or one of
the social media companies,
you may have some valuable information,
that you understand the company
differently than other people.
So it's a nice way to
move into the industry.
There's many other ways and
you have to be creative.
What are the skills you need?
Strong communication skills,
comfortable speaking to large
groups, one on one groups.
Sometimes the one on one were
the harder groups to talk to.
They're the ones who wanted all
the detail of your models,
how did you get there,
you have to be comfortable with developing
financial spreadsheets,
know the accounting rules,
and know what's conservative accounting
versus liberal accounting, which is
a no no for companies you wanna invest in.
Computer skills, when
I was hiring associate
or junior analysts to work for me,
I was looking for people
with computer skills
because computer skills, internet skills,
PowerPoint, I finally
learned how to do PowerPoint,
but skills were important.
We were creative, a lot of the people
who worked with me, much more creative
and resourceful, and have
high levels of stamina.
This is a quick snapshot of
the positives and negatives.
And probably one of the
most important points there,
you can't see so I'll point it out.
Positively, never a typical day,
and it was a very fast
paced, exciting environment.
If you didn't mind the hours,
you were subject to a lot of
interesting news that you would work on.
You were the go to person
for those number of stocks,
you were the expert, and you were
considered very highly at the firm.
You're your own boss, not withstanding
compliance issues, which of
course you couldn't bypass.
You were highly compensated,
and you would travel a lot.
You would travel a lot,
you would go to dinners with managements.
Kinda nice to be with
the CEO, for example,
of Apple, or even Mark Zuckerberg on a
one to one basis and have dinner to
understand how he views the world.
The Bureau of Labor statistics,
I was looking up what analysts get paid,
and it understates what the
potential compensation is.
The mean, or the average
job salary for an analyst,
and this is just starting out, is $75,000.
But that's well before bonuses.
Bonuses, an analyst that's in demand,
could make 10 or 20 times over that.
And, importantly, the
growth in the market,
is 23% annually, through 2020,
so when Wall Street cleans up their act,
just in time for you to graduate,
or just in time for you
to maybe graduate from
a four year school, things
could be very exciting.
What are the negatives?
You give up a lot on hours.
I think 60 hours is probably about right,
but if you have a very demanding industry,
like telecom, or like social media
could be significantly more.
Pressured environment, you
always have to be right,
and you're probably going to be
less right than a baseball player.
I always think about baseball players.
If you're hitting 300,
you're considered a
lifetime great achiever.
If you only have three good stock calls
out of 10 a year, you're probably
in the doghouse, which I was, many times.
Higher job risks, you may lose your jobs,
you may switch jobs a lot.
If you have a narrow focus,
if you end up not liking
it, good to get out.
And of course compliance
and legal restraints,
it's going to get only
tougher going forward.
Where would you get a job?
Broker dealers, the brokerage firms,
the investment banks, the pension funds
that have portfolio managers that do work,
insurance companies,
financial advisory companies,
even the rating agencies,
a good place to start are
the rating agencies, they're
all located in New York.
Moody's, Standard and
Poor's, Fitch, anywhere
that you are comfortable
crunching numbers,
good place to go.
There's a lot of
independent research firms.
And how do you go about finding a job?
I think all different ways.
When I was a senior analyst I would get
really interesting letters
that caught my attention,
so as Professor Kasomenakis said,
sometimes building a resume,
knowing how to write a
attention grabbing cover letter
is important, and build your
schools wherever you are.
How'd I get a job, just quickly?
I had worked in back office, actually,
in the accounting department,
for the CFO at Drexel.
Applied internally and was
able to make the switch.
I was in the right place at the right time
'cause I was working for a senior analyst.
The telecom landscape was changing,
there was a lot of regulatory,
they were deregulating the opposite of
what the industry might go through now.
And I became a full time
analyst almost by accident.
Drexel was having problems
and Drexel blew up.
No one wanted to work for Drexel,
it was blowing up because
of Micheal Milken,
and a couple of other things,
and it became a huge opportunity for me.
My senior analyst actually left me,
but he took everything, all my databases.
I remember July fourth, it
was a July fourth weekend
when I had to recreate in three days
all of the company spreadsheets.
And as I mentioned, I went through the
Drexel bankruptcy but I
did spend 10 years at UBS.
Lotta perseverance, lotta
diligence, lots of luck.
Lot of luck, and as I mentioned,
WorldCom, Tyco, Quest, Enron,
many more CEOs and CFOs, and management,
are spending time in jail.
What's my advice to you guys?
What I would recommend in any industry
in the business area, work hard,
do as best you can, GPAs count.
Take as many accounting
and finance classes,
computer, know your resources,
and use every network
opportunity on campus,
and outside campus to get to know
managements of the company,
go to the job fairs even though
you're not graduating,
get to know some people.
Know about the financial
markets through reading,
observing, watching the news,
take note of some industries
you might be more interested in.
Read some analyst reports,
they float around on the street,
you can see how some of them sound kind of
suspicious when they're
pointing on the stocks.
Take advantage of any internships,
and those of you who
are in my finance class,
later on I usually talk
about maybe writing to some
of the senior analysts
and introducing yourself.
Just keep sending letters.
This was some of the earlier
things we talked about.
Well that's it, and I'm open to questions.
Anyone interested in being
an analyst on the street,
or working for Wall Street?
The question is, to take my finance
class do you have to be a business major?
There's a lotta prerequisites for it,
finance is usually the last class.
I think there are three or four classes
you have to take, but some of which
would also be suffice for Liberal Arts,
English Composition one and two,
and some of the others,
and if you have an interest
in finance then it`
means that you probably are interested
in learning a little
bit more about business.
Great question.
Analysts are often thought
of as being over-speculative.
And how does that affect the economy?
Well, first, analysts, and I probably
should've said this earlier,
analysts are specialists
in their industry,
so often they have an economist
within their firm that makes some calls.
Analysts who make some calls on companies
need to be conscientious about their
buy recommendations and I think
the rules have tightened up a bit
that you have to have reasons for your
buy recommendations
and not be speculative.
There are some analysts
who put out estimates
with no foundation and fact
and have gotten in trouble for that,
so there's usually a research director,
legal and compliance that will not allow
analysts to put out writing
or changing investments
without going through at least a screen.
Good question about analysts who make,
analysts could be wrong.
And ultimately, if
they're wrong long enough,
they usually lose their following.
And in fact, you raise a good point,
there were many more analysts
recommending to buy recommendations
on companies like WorldCom
and ultimately WorldCom fell apart.
I actually left the
industry before it did,
but I have to be honest, if I was in
that environment I probably would've gone
all the way down to the dollar
that it finally filed for bankruptcy.
Analysts are wrong, the point is
how many analysts will come back to
investors and admit that they're wrong?
I happen to have had a terrific mentor
who made us constantly tell investors
when we were wrong, and we
had egg on our face a lot,
but it was worth doing that than hiding.
And he would be very punitive
if we went into hiding.
It was harder to come back then.
There was a question here.
Good question, if you have no experience,
how to get into the industry.
A couple things, first I would
definitely finish school,
I would look for internships,
either on the campus,
or if even you go on some of the websites
that some of the investment banks
or brokerage firms sometimes offer,
it's very, very competitive,
but that doesn't mean that they
automatically will take someone
with a 4.0 from Harvard or an Ivy League.
And I think I would do a lot of cold,
maybe not cold calling,
no one will take the call,
but I would send out cold
letters and express an interest.
In order to get some experience,
I would be willing to take some short,
or part time work to do some of the number
crunching for some of the senior analysts.
I've seen a number of junior analysts
get their foot in the door
while they were finishing college.
I had a couple during the summer myself,
where I would get some letters,
and I would start interviewing
somewhere in April or May,
so that might be something that
maybe we as an institution, QCC,
during some of the resume building
or letter writing we can do
some more targeted letters.
Great question, how do you differentiate
yourself into being a good analyst,
and what makes a good analyst?
Lotta different ways to be a good analyst.
Some analysts were very,
very good with numbers,
the accounting, the
notes on the accounting.
Other analysts were very good at marketing
and getting under the hood,
if you will, of the industry.
Lotta different ways to be successful.
You have to almost understand
what you're best at.
I competed in an industry,
telecom industry,
which had one woman, myself, and 29 males.
I was married at the time so it wasn't
interesting from a social perspective,
but, in truth, of those 29,
most of them were much
more science oriented
and engineering, and understood
the mechanisms of the telecom network,
so I had to do something different.
I like the law, the regulatory aspects.
I had trained under someone
who knew regulation,
and I found myself finding bits
of information that was definitely public,
but I would go down to DC and I would try
to understand what the law
makers were thinking about,
how they were going to open up regulation.
I think that ended up being
a windfall for myself.
I would go to all the early hearings
and hear Ted Kennedy, and
all the other Senators,
as they were making steps
toward deregulation.
But I've had friends who
understand products very well,
and understand what the market,
the customers would go, and would go
to trade shows and would understand.
So a lotta different things,
there's a lotta different
ways to be successful.
(audience member mumbling)
Understanding politics in a
regulated industry is very key.
Some of you had gone
to Constitutional Day,
and telecom was competing with cable,
they compete with entertainment,
at a time when the rules
were very, very tight,
then the rules opened up,
and so who's the winner?
The cable companies or telecom?
Fios versus the cable, the digital cable.
So that was something that a lot
of the engineering people understood.
I understood it from
the political landscape.
Some people understand it,
if you follow retail industry,
you understand the trends in
a recessionary environment.
The best companies, the companies
the stocks that were doing best over
the last 12, 18 months,
are the dollar stores.
Not necessarily luxury stores,
like Coach or Michael Kors,
but it was Dollar General, it was TJ Maxx,
it was Target, it was
Costco, all those names.
So I think it's hard to explain it,
but sometimes you know when
you have new information, whoops.
Any other questions?
A question that the young lady had asked
is monetary and fiscal policy,
why does government have to regulate?
Regulate the market,
and it really depends,
in the equity market,
it's the Security Exchange Commission,
not necessarily the Federal Reserve,
and the SEC was basically put in place
after the Great Depression,
when the market significantly went down.
And so increasingly,
new rules have been in,
I think some of you might've
been in my last class,
I was talking about a
company, a stock, actually,
Questcor, never covered the company,
and the stock opened today at 50,
but in very short period
of time it dropped to 22.
It was down almost 50% when
I got back to my office,
or looked on the SEC,
and the New York Stock Exchange
actually have rules that if a stock drops
by a certain amount, or too much volume,
you have circuit breakers.
That's a good thing that they put
circuit breakers, they halt the stock.
So there's a lot of regulations
that the stock market
has to have in place.
I'll take Yosef, you had your question,
and I think that might be
about the last question.
Very interesting.
Question is what made me wanna do it.
I actually, and I hope
Professor Kasomenakis
does not feel insulted,
but I originally started in accounting
in several of the companies I worked in,
and a few of the people had moved
in Salomon Brothers to
understanding an industry,
and I felt that I wanted to understand
more deeply about one company,
or a group of companies,
than the company I was
working for at the time,
Salomon Brothers, or Drexel Burnham,
and where a lotta people do
a lotta different things,
and I found it much more interesting
for me to not just understand it
from an accounting point of view,
but in addition to accounting,
I would understand the
finance as a company,
the marketing about the company,
I would also understand
what makes that stock tick,
so I think I just liked
the pace even though
I worked 24 by seven many, many weeks.
Think I've told people in my class,
in the 17 years that I was working,
by the last 10 years I was
getting five week vacations.
In 17 years, I don't
think I've ever taken,
in total, five week vacation.
So you do give up a lot,
and I also postpone the children,
you give up a lot, but it was also
a very interesting time to be an analyst.
