Interesting times

These are interesting times and I’m continually told that I’ll learn more in the current environment than I would have in the several years that preceded the start of the credit crunch! My senior was out on holiday last week so I was left running the ship. It was a very busy week and I spent a lot of it running from meeting to meeting, interviewing the management of companies we might want to invest in.

This week has proved to be equally busy as the market has been digesting the weekend news of the massive bailout of US mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s thrown up a number of trading opportunities because after the initial euphoria, the general consensus now is that it’s a solution to a symptom not the cause of the problems.

Adam - Insight Investment scheme

After completing an Economics degree at Nottingham University, I had a year out travelling before joining the graduate scheme Insight Investment, HBOS’s asset management arm. Insight is based in London and manages money on behalf of our clients. In short, we either try and give our clients a regular income from their initial investment or try and grow it through investing in a variety of different asset classes. I initially rotated across various parts of the business before settling down within the Fixed Income team. More specifically I work within “Credit”, which is the part of the financial services industry that’s dominated the headlines since summer last year! On a day to basis, I research companies for which we might already be investors or may be considering investing in. Once I’ve formulated a view on a company, I’ll feed this back to the fund managers and discuss any trading opportunities.