The smartest move I ever made was to start hiring Ivy League grads as analysts. I dropped out of the Unv of Iowa when I started making decent money from my site and trading, but my best friend from HS graduated with honors from Cornell and recently from Harvard Law so I had a way to contact some people there. It worked out well for me in building connections, but really anything you can do to expand your social/business network is going to help you out if you want AUM. Here's an example, I'm a poor farm hick from Iowa, a guy who was reading my blogs here on ET about four years ago really identified with me. He was worth about $50 million and lived down in Naples. I drove down, golfed with him we had a great time. He lives in a very exclusive community in Naples, $250,0000 buy in, $10million plus Houses. Chairman of SAP has a house there, former chairman of BAC etc. So, I befriend him and from him I meet a guy an older guy who's been on the board of directors of American Express for years. He grew up in South Dakota, lost an arm as a teenager and scraped his way to the top. Another connection even though I'm just a stupid hick. If your serious about this business, any way you can get em you should. I'm hoping that I have only one more surgery left, then i will give myself a month or so to recover and start again with managing larger amounts of money. It should be a hell of a lot easier this time than it was last time.
More on Ivy League stuff. Lets say your kid is accepted to Harvard and your local state university. Both will cost you the same amount of money. Where do you want your kid to go to school? The education they get will probably be about the same, but is that the entire reason your sending them.
It really depends on what kind of finance related business people want to operate. A business that depends on AUM will benefit from the social connections conferred by these exclusive clubs. But the sort of people who build a career on AUM rather than on absolute performance must properly be thought of as a some what elevated servant to the wealthy. They gather and shepard but do not take the sorts of risks that can translate into real wealth. The Buffetts, Soros and Steinhardts of our world do not fall into this category. The distinction has to be made between making the right moves in the market as opposed to making the right moves socially. Both can lead to wealth, but only the former can lead to respect.
I work at an Investment Bank. The bank I work at hires a lot of students from other schools. They don't hire that many ivy leaguers for some reason. I'm not sure why, but they hire a ton of students from Boston College, more than Harvard and MIT.
They hire from a host of other colleges. SMU, Michigan, Chicago, NYU, Wellesley, Penn State, Middlebury, and etc. They also hire from Ivy League too, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, and Wharton. It's not necessary to get a degree in finance either. Most ibanks have training programs before they start work. Some major in history or English. The compensation is 60k plus anywhere up to 80k bonus depending on market conditions and performance. Perhaps these clubs were developed to get connections or probably because of the bad job market. Ibanks have been cutting down and several banks have rescinded their offers.
Some people are happy taking a piss anywhere they want and that bothers me too. No one is stopping these kids from forming their clubs or spending their entire college career trying to get a coveted spot as an analyst at an investment bank, but I have a right to speak my mind on the subject. Many people who started out as analysts (and I used to be one) actually ended up not doing as well as they might have hoped. Most of them never moved beyond being an Excel monkey or a pitch book bitch. Generally, they worked a lot but end up learning very little. Also, to be a player in the market it takes more than just brains. Other aspects of personality like courage become a lot more important in separating the wheat from the chafe. The actual dynamics of analysis is really very straight forward and with computing power these days just about anyone can run the numbers. I feel sorry for the kids who are spending their time with this crazy run around trying to get into an investment bank. They would be much better served getting drunk on good books, learning to read intelligently and discovering how to write with panache.
mingsphinx, what do you do now? Analysts have a lot of options like going back to business school or joining a hedge fund, private equity fund, or doing some other financial analysis job.
Since you are new here and obviously dont know me and have no idea what your talking about as it relates to MY business, I will forgive your ignorance. Anyone managing money probably would like to have as much AUM as they can get. I cant imagine why they would not. I do not charge any fee based upon the AUM, it's based 100% on performance, but the more AUM I have the more money I make. Again I see your new here, so I wont assume anything about you, but I will tell you that making assumptions you have not checked out is a retarded thing to do and will cost you your ass in the market if you continue to do it. G'nite.