When you graduate, the learning begins

What I wish I knew when I graduated was that the only thing that matters is finding a job where you can learn. Learn what it means to have a job, learn a skill, learn about an industry, and meet mentors who can steer you in the right direction and share their experiences.

When I worked at Bloomberg they taught us so much. They put on 2-week all-day classes on topics like Equity Derivatives, Charting, Fundamental Analysis, and Structured Credit Valuations, and made us take tests on a regular basis. This was instrumental in my early career. They hired ex-Wall Street and had them influence products, training material, and teaching courses. Once we passed courses they had us teaching conferences, classes, and events for clients, sometimes in front of hundreds of people. This experience was my stepping stone into the buy side.

I recently spoke at a few classes put on by Brett Caughran at Fundamental Edge and its exciting to see the knowledge he is sharing. Everything from modeling, management meetings, research, and leveraging alternative data. Bringing in experts to speak and share their experiences. This feels like a P72 academy meets a Bloomberg internal training and it’s fun to see his Twitter threads as he builds the business. I enjoy meeting the students in his classes which allows me to speak about the tools & data I used on the buy side and I have even gotten some interesting introductions from these classes to new startups building for the capital markets space.

When you graduate, optimize for learning, for companies where you get to work with great people, and for opportunity.