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.

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.