The Life of an Investment Banker

It's been awhile. I have some regrets that I didn't kick off this blog talking about the investment banker lifestyle.

If you wondered why you haven't heard from me lately, it was because I was getting more awesome.

 

This is me at a hotel room in Las Vegas taking Christmas Break early. That is what is called contrarian investing; I will be working my butt of during Christmas week. But then again, how can I call what I do work. I live, breathe and eat it. It gives me endorphins I could almost swear.

More on that pic of me: Did you notice how subtly I was showing off why I am such a good investment banker. There is of course the must have shades and then iPhone 4s to show everyone how tech savvy I am. Not to mention the fact that I was taking this pic while deciding which tie to wear.

I finally decided on the $100 Saks Fifth Avenue tie you see in that pic. No, I am not going to be wearing my Lacoste Sport Tee which I usually wear for a round of golf, etc. There is more to the pic - notice my $700 22k gold ring with a diamond stud too.

That's investment banking in a nutshell for you. There is the good side and then the not so good side.

For now, Nevada beckons. I love Las Vegas. Great lights and great women! What more could you ask for?

Microsoft Excel Again

From the many job postings that I have been looking at it seems that employers would like an applicant to be proficient in VLookup functions, formulas, macros and pivot tables and pivot charts. It seems like that this is not a big task to master these things, but there have been whole books about 300 pages long written about pivot tables that you might find interesting to know.

As for macros and VBA, it is always going to be rather the challenging. Having dappled with the issue myself, I think the best advice is to look to reference the code you need to build the different models in Excel or the different tasks that you might need to do and keep looking back at this reference. Trying to memorize or otherwise learning the macros and VBA is really futile. We all have better things to do!!

Again, it's like what I have said meeting someone you know and like and who likes you also will go a long way in helping you and your investment banking career compared to mastering a technical skill.

Financial Modeling and VLOOKUP functions!

I have been studying up a lot of financial modeling and brushing up on excel including everything from VBA and macros to pivot tables and formulas.

On the subject of business cards, Ramit Sethi seems to think that handing them out are a waste of time. But anyway I just wanted to point out that you can get free business cards from so many places. Here is one.

Getting back to Excel, I wanted to tell you that right now I am studying up the VLOOKUP function and it really does not seem to be very challenging. The worry for me with Excel is how can you really remember all of it and would it be better if I could be able to find what I needed rather than knowing everything and working from the top of my head which is pretty challenging even for a guy with a great memory like me.

I’ll be honest with you I haven’t really been getting many page views with this blog like the other one I have and I am going to start listing on site directories such as Open Directory Project and World Wide Web Directory as was advised by many SEO experts.