Opportunity knocks

Where to begin! It’s been another crazy couple of weeks for the markets! I guess the most important take away for anyone contemplating a career in asset management is that if you haven’t taken an avid interest in recent events, this probably isn’t the career for you! At almost any interview, you’ll be expected to have a good grasp on current affairs and will probably be asked to give your opinion on a topical issue. You’ll hear it over and over again, but the best way of learning is by reading a decent newspaper (although something with a bit of debate like Newsnight is a reasonable substitute).

On a personal level, I’ve spent the last week looking at the liquidity of the companies in my coverage. Basically, we’re forecasting if a company is going to run out of cash. If we think they are going to struggle, we’ll steer clear of the company. However, if we can get comfortable that they won’t go bust within the next year, there are actually some trades that we can do that generate a good return and only involve taking on a year’s worth of risk at no upfront cost. One of the sectors that I cover is Autos which have has a pretty torrid time of late. As well as the liquidity analysis, I’ve been reviewing some of the auto names to refresh our opinions on them and see where we think they should trade relative to one another. The sorts of things I’ve typically done is speak directly to the company, ring brokers at the investment banks to get their opinions and model the expected financial performance of the company going forward.

Since I last posted, I’ve been asked to change roles from being an analyst to working on the fund management desk. I didn’t think an opportunity like this would come along for a number of years so I’m looking forward to starting that in the next couple of weeks. It just goes to show that irrespective of what going on in the wider world, there are still opportunities within Insight.