My Investment Strategy

In meeting with various people this week at the Treasury, I learned some pretty good lessons and thought I would share one with you all. While describing the investors out there saying that we should all buy bank stock right now, based on the fact that they think things will rebound and turn around in the financial sector (and I'm not saying whether I agree or not) one visitor said, "Hope is not an investment strategy."

That is a great thing to think about as you are preparing for interviews and trying to get a job or an internship in the coming months. Hope will not get you there, especially this year.

It's not enough to hope that you'll be ready to answer the "big three" questions in the interview:

• Tell me about yourself...
  
• Why do you want to do investment banking?
• Why do you want to work for [insert name]?

If you're not ready by the time you call people for an informational interview, it's too late.

It's not enough to hope that you won't be asked to walk somebody through a DCF valuation. You have to know that sucker backwards and forwards, inside and out. You have to take the time to pick a random company and build a DCF yourself so you make sure that you know it.

It's not enough to hope that you'll get interviews on campus when the banks come (if they do). You need to be SURE that you'll get an interview by networking with bankers and having them confirm that they'll go to bat for you. You need to be visiting every bank getting interviews everywhere because you just don't know which banks will even be around by next summer. You need to know by January 15th that you'll have interviews at multiple places.

It's not enough to hope that you'll be able to explain in a real general sense what's going on in the economy. You need to be talking with people in the markets, reading blogs and news articles and the WSJ, and making sure that you can tell people why we got where we are and what we need to do about it.

You see, hope is great and it's actually a really healthy thing to be optimistic and hope for the best in these times. But these are days to take action. These are days to be proactive. To rely on your own hard work to really make things happen.

In the immortal words of William Henley's Invictus:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloodied, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll.
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

One of the things that I did over the summer was to put up inspirational quotes around my desk that motivated me to work hard, continue learning, and do the best I could. I'll post in the next day or two some of those quotes that you all can read and get fired up and ready to get those internships and jobs.