 Okay, hello and welcome to episode three, the final of this three part series with John Norman, where we talk about lots of different things actually, John, but first of all, how are you and how is your Easter break? Good, it was all good, went back to the States for a bit, gave my son a chance to see his cousins on the bayou so it was all good. Good stuff. Well, look, I'm super excited we just caught up about some of the things we're going to cover here but to give the listeners a bit of a preview. Attributes of good analysts and associates you've worked with. Obviously you spent best part of 25 years at JP Morgan so I'm sure there's going to be some, some great information there for our listeners and then entering finance from a non traditional background. So just namely for those you haven't studied typical things like economics or STEM but also demographically so we'll go into that in a bit more detail, then the value of newer credentials, things like quantitative related methods as well which are becoming ever more prevalent in the finance sphere So, starting off then, John, I mean you've not only gone through the pathway yourself of course from analysts associate and up to MD when you when you left JP, but you assume you've worked with lots of them over your career and I just interested to know was there any commonality between those that you really were warmed to in terms of their skillset or even personality, work style, and what did that look like for you. So, I've hired a lot of analysts and associates to work on my teams I've trained the analysts and associate population previously at JP because they used to organize that still organized kind of a multi week training program and they asked people for the business to teach some of the content of what they do every day so teaching different rates teaching foreign exchange teaching commodities so I've got, I think a fairly broad perspective on this. And for me, what differentiates one analyst for from another meaning the very successful analysts for from another is not just pure smarts because obviously all of these organizations are recruiting from probably the brightest, you know, share of the population anyway so that's really not the big differentiator I think there are other characteristics that kind of separate the super successful ones from maybe that the last successful ones. One important characteristic is resilience, meaning, given that stress is pretty systemic and markets is kind of the nature of the business is the person on the team just capable of anticipating those high stress moments do they perform. Well, under time constraints and and if they fail, can they kind of get back on track pretty easily and pretty quickly without getting discouraged. And so if you're someone who's, you know, kind of soft around criticism someone who's not very good at being having to kind of put something on the spot because that's what market conditions or clients demand, you know, you're probably going to fail the resiliency test and I think that's pretty important to know about, you know, your, your, your nature, going into these kind of roles. Secondly, I think it's incredibly important to be curious, meaning, whether you're a researcher, a salesperson or trader, it's really not enough just to want to answer the question that everyone's asking right now, it's important to understand what's probably the question everyone's going to want to answer. I mean certainly if you're a researcher and you want to be someone who's known for having a quite innovative and creative research agenda that's useful to people, you're going to be need, you're going to need to anticipate what the next big question is, and answer it if you're a salesperson who's trying to make an impact on your client, you also have to think about what's going to be the next market narrative that you should be pitching into. And definitely if you're a risk taker, if you're a trader, it's not just about what the market is focused on now, but the next phase or next set of issues that are going to move asset prices so curiosity is super important. Thirdly, I think efficiency is is indispensable if you're an analyst or associate who wants to succeed in lots of the things that you're going to be asked to do are have a deadline and the deadline could be intraday it could be an hour. So it's not just about being smart enough and industrious enough to get to the answer eventually. You can probably, you will probably have to get to it, you know, much more quickly than you had to get to the answer when you were in university. And when I tell the story to or explain this concept to people I remind them of an experience I had my first year on the desk in New York working in the foreign exchange business that the head of the business used to use me to write up sort of you know outlooks on on currency markets for hedge fund clients and he was very clear about his standard he said john I want 75% of the answer by five o'clock rather than 90% of the answer tomorrow and you know that's a rule of thumb which is not useful in every situation and sometimes you actually have to get it 100% right, no matter how long it takes. But in many circumstances, you know getting more than half under a tight deadline is a lot more important than and being perfect. I think it's also important to be a very collaborative individual, meaning when people ask for help, whether it's the boss or just a colleague or even someone below you, you give it and and even when people don't ask for help if you've got some bandwidth, you know you volunteer to get involved in these things. I realize that over the short term, being collaborative in that way can maybe detract from trying to meet your own performance objectives but I think what you're going to find is that over time, being known as someone who's a good partner, a reliable partner someone who's capable of working with other people and maybe even external counterparts, you're going to be seen as someone who's worth investing in so it's very important that to have those collaborative skills, and to not be a loner, you know there are some roles and finance. And I can think of some I won't name them where it's okay to be a loner, but I think in big organizations, particularly investment banks, you know, being a loner is not a great strategy for the majority of the jobs that you'll come across in in the markets and investment banking. And finally, I think it's important to be very responsive to feedback. I talked in the first podcast about how frequently you're going to fail because the challenge of understanding and anticipating markets is a very extreme challenge and if you're getting it right six percent of the time you're pretty good, you can be failing a lot of the time. If you're getting feedback from a senior person that you should probably be doing things in a different way, take the feedback, you know chances are if that person is senior, they're very competent, you hope they're pretty I guess that they will be pretty competent if they're senior at, you know, a very reputable organization, follow their lead and follow their instructions. And then if maybe you're not 100% comfortable with the way they're proposing, you do it, you have a discussion about, you know why maybe you prefer to do it in your first instance, but in the first instance, and for the first several iterations of this, just listen to the feedback, you know, they're not giving that that feedback to you in order to fight for you very likely they're giving that feedback to you because they think you've got a lot of potential. They just think the method is that you're following don't realize that potential fully and they're trying to help you kind of maximize your contribution so so take it with a sort of helpful kind of undertone and follow it. It's so interesting because of all the senior people like you that I'm lucky to talk to nearly every single one has resilience first in terms of a list so do you think you can learn resilience in your career. Or is it something more that's I mean in that early part the analyst associate kind of segment, or is it something that you've you've learned through life experience and you've had that runway to be able to hit the ground and deal with that environment, or can you arrive at the bank and learn it. Do you think I think you can be taught a more resilient mindset if you have a senior person contextualize the kind of things that that that you're going to be dealing with. Well, one of the ways that people might feel they're failing with resiliency is they just make a bad call, you know a trader who lost money on something a sales person who didn't do something that a client needed an analyst who made a bad market call but if you have a senior person look you're going to miss probably you know this many times out of 100, you're not going to feel so bad about those individual missing it so that that context can help. But I do think there's some value and just having tried things on your own initiative without sponsorship having failed and having recovered from it in your life before you got to the institution and and that's why it's important to take you know some measured risks. When you're in school it's important to take some measured risks if you have some employment opportunities before you get out of school. It's a way of just sort of seeing what you're capable of and and unfortunately I think there's certain demands of a of a market environment which just don't fit the personality of certain people. It doesn't mean that person is in some way defective it just means that there are to certain trades you need to succeed in environments that are deadline driven. You can't stand deadlines, you know, there are lots of other fields that are so deadline driven, you go into that instead, but it's important to kind of understand, you know what features you have, how much you can kind of develop some of core features you have, what are your red lines in terms of things you just don't want to do or can't do, and making sure all of that is pretty consistent with the demands of the job. So keep in mind that you know what I'm describing is very much the experience of someone who worked in in markets and I particularly worked in markets that kind of traded 24 hours a day I did for exchange for a long time so I feel like I have certain sort of requirements of an analyst that you wouldn't have if your analysts were doing domestic credit in the Euro area or domestic credit in the in the US so you know here what I'm saying in that kind of context. All right, well let's move to conversation on and talk a little bit about the entering into finance from a non traditional background love to get your take on that. Sure, so I think I'm having a non traditional background in in two ways one is having a non traditional academic background and the others having a non traditional, maybe demographic background, a non traditional academic background to me is someone who didn't study economics, finance business or stem science technology engineering or math. And I think if you are going to be someone who for whatever reason studied something else you studied something in the humanities something in the arts. What you need to be aware of when you go to these interviews is that you need to demonstrate, despite having studied those other things that are non traditional that you still got some relevant skills and you still got some interest in in the content of a market's job or an investment banking job. So how would you do that, if, if you just happen to be the person who studied history, literature, languages, philosophy. One of the ways you can do it is by teaming up with the amplify crowd and even though I haven't worked with you guys for, you know, formally I've just done these podcasts and interviews with you guys. You know, what you're doing is providing training to people so that regardless of what they have studied. They still have some basic skills in order to speak intelligently about their aptitudes and their interests. And, and hopefully they perform pretty well in these training simulations to prove to prospective employers that they can, they can, they can do the work, even though they started some study something completely unrelated so you need to be prepared to answer that basic question of what skills do you have that are relevant and, and how do you demonstrate your interest in this one way is by doing these programs like amplify. I think another way to do it is to be materially involved in some of these student societies around investing or the economics society or the finance society. Most universities have these some have several of these get involved, but not just the person who takes attendance at the door, you know, they have trading simulations that that the society runs do one of those and they've got some material to talk about in the, in the interview. So I think there are, you know, multiple paths into into finance, you don't have to have studied something traditional, but if you haven't, you need to be able to answer those questions around skills and and interest. The other way to think about being non traditional is having being from a non traditional demographic and, and I think if you are someone who only watches maybe television or movie depictions or even watches the financial issues, you probably think you know the dominant demographic across finance is white middle aged heterosexual middle class male. And as I talked about in the in the first podcast that will characterize unfortunately some institutions. And that will unfortunately characterize senior leadership at some institutions, but that's an incredible stereotype to be applying to the industry, you know, many big investment banks, many big money managers many small ones have much more diverse leadership committees they have much more diverse overall populations and they have more diverse analysts associate populations so I wouldn't. So when you come from a certain demographic to feel like you must be the only one who's like that because all you're ever seeing on TV is this other particular demographic that you're not part of my message is that, you know that that media representation is is does not always fit many institutions, do your homework on this if, if being from a non traditional demographic is is is something that's very relevant to you. And, and most importantly, I think you need to ask the questions around what the incoming class of analysts associates has looked like for the past few years, I would be, you know, very comfortable telling someone, join the place that doesn't look like you at the senior level. If it looks like the analysts associate population has been very different, much more diverse for the past few years that tells you the organization is committed to this as a value, and they're doing something very concrete to rectify it so they change the population at the base so that over time with retention and sponsorship and coaching. So it's very different in in 20 years to so I think that's really where I focus like what is the population look like at the, at the bottom how consistently has it looked like that, rather than judging everything based on who's at the top. So, the final question the value of newer credentials and actually quite, quite interested in this one because if you being a researcher and generative AI and I read those fed papers that came out talking about how they were using it to analyze. Well, we'll see whether it's better and faster than you and I at delving through a statement at this point. But yeah, if through your career I'm sure there's been adaptation of your skill set and newer credentials the way the market is kind of evolving, be great to get your take on that and perhaps some useful tips that you can share with the community. Sure. In terms of newer credentials I'll highlight a couple of things one is data science and one is climate science and I realized we just had a discussion about, you know what it's like if you don't have a technical background but unfortunately the field is becoming even more technical. That's partly because of just the, the, the change in sort of data creation over the past few years there's just more data, more of it is is unstructured and, and alongside that there's been an explosion and techniques to analyze that. This is largely around natural language processing and it's also around machine learning techniques which are statistical techniques so no surprise that, regardless of what field of finance we're talking about whether it's an analyst researcher. A salesperson, a trader, there's definitely a premium on hiring people who have some data science experience and, and, and I say this, you know, with full understanding of what it takes to acquire those credentials I think if you're someone who is trying to acquire data science credentials, your competing gets a crowd which is, which is really tough, meaning there are going to be people who have degrees in that and, and advanced degrees and even terminal degrees like PhDs in this, and, and you're going to be competing against people who not only have taken, you know, a few classes in, in Python online but are coding day to day. So I think it's really important as you think about, you know what job you want in finance, am I going more towards the trading route, am I going more towards the sales route more towards the, the research route, you know how future proof or my credentials, and, and I think it's worth thinking about how you can get some data science experience, there are different ways to do it, you can obviously do it at an academic standard which is majoring in it. If you feel like, you know, that's not really your passion, you're more of a econ person or something else, at least take one course at your university in it. And for some reason you can't fit that into your curriculum because you've got these other requirements, there's not room for data science module, a lot of online courses that are self paced and self study. Many of them are free and you only pay a fee if you want to get a certificate afterwards. So I would really encourage people to do that and I say this as someone who's done it myself, meaning I'm someone who spent 25 years in the industry I had a couple already before I, or I had a couple degrees one in econ and another one in economics and policy before I entered the, the industry. When I started to make a transition and thought about moving to the buy side I was very aware that the field had moved on quantitatively. And, and one of the things that I have done is I've taken data science courses it's offered by the CFA Institute not a CFA so it's very easy to kind of tap into that. But even if you're not a CFA, there are other things you can do and, and, and I've done at an older age, you know trying to pretend that I'm ever going to be a programmer, but the expectation is that in whatever role I am in, I should be able to read this material I should be able to analyze it and critique it if, if a research report is presented to me and the statistical techniques that that drive the conclusion are based on machine learning so I need to be an educated consumer of it and I've spent some time educating myself you can do it it's not expensive, you know you're not not too dumb or too old to master it yourself, especially if you're in your early 20s. The other thing I would keep in mind is that if you are some morning very committed to sustainability as, as an investment pursuit, and I realize this doesn't apply to everyone on this on this video. But if you are committed to that, you know you should you should try to get some proper understanding of climate science there's a there's a huge debate and investment management and investment analysis right now about whether or not the people who are making a sustainable investment, actually understand you know the underlying empirical issues, or they just people who had some standing and some other part of finance and and they've been rebranded as the sustainability officer the head of ESG research or whatever, even though there's really very little if no formal training in the underlying climate science. I feel like this issue is too complex to just give it to people who don't really understand the underlying material. And I think all of the kind of recrudentializing and credential washing that's going on is not going to be the norm in five or 10 years time in five years time. It's not going to be the case that if you want to work and sustain and investing and you want to do something around climate, you need to probably have some proper climate credentials and I think that's worth, you know, thinking about if you're an undergraduate, you're kind of aiming for that that sort of role. Eventually, or you want to commit to that sector, and, and you still got some ability to pick up some university studies in that in that area. I have a couple questions to wrap it up. Does any podcast you listen to them that cover any of the subjects that we've talked about. Do you have a routine where there's a particular person that you like what doesn't have to be a podcast but material that's public source that you like reading from an enjoyment perspective around markets or from an educational perspective. So I'm at two ways. One is, you know, when I when I worked in banking, I had, I worked on a team of 900 other researchers, Morgan, which was a phenomenal experience that was specialist in everything around economics and markets but you know of that team of 900 people 10 people I read religiously, because there were particular issues that were important to me it might be the call a certain economy or a certain central bank or the call over on a particular sector of the equity market or a certain piece of the of the interest rate market and and not only did I need to know about those but I really respected the way that those analysts approach the market meaning they, they had a very structured way of thinking they had a transparent framework that they followed to arrive at their views. And hopefully they had a decent writing style. So of, you know, the thousands of pages of reports that were coming to my inbox, every day there was a subset that I followed I won't mention names it's not necessary, many of them know who they are but the point is, you know, if you're if you're in that finance environment, whether you're on the outside or the or the buy side, you're going to have access to that entire ecosystem. You know, when you're, when you're in your spot, you know, as the senior people around you, what five people should I read, or make that decision for yourself after reading kind of everything for for three months and those are going to be kind of your go to people for for insights, since I've left the investment banking side of the business I've had to recreate some of that and it's been a mixture of reports from public policy think tanks that right on the global economy, I find this to be a pretty useful component to a lot of the work that you see from investment banks, investment banks to never bullish bias on asset markets and the economy it's important to read the work of people outside of that ecosystem who don't quite have the same conflicts of interest and and can be a little more objective about that. I read a reasonable amount of work coming out of the Fed economists, meaning a lot of people want to poo poo the work of central bankers because they think their policy decisions are bad but what's important to realize is that whatever is made by, you know, those who are setting interest rates, their armies of economists to work for the Bank of England, ECB, the Fed, the Bank of Japan, the RBA, and so on, and they and they publish papers that can be very useful to you and just kind of understanding some some basic issues. And then finally, I read a lot of content produced by sort of independent analysts so once you don't work in investment banks they work for some of the independent shops in the US and Europe again, I think because they work in a slightly different kind of commercial setting, their work tends to be a little more objective, you know, relative to some of the work that's produced by people who only write on one asset market and where there's kind of a natural bullish bias in the market. So there's quite a lot of content, you know, you can you can have people around you for specific names you can you can kind of ping me offline if you want some specific names but but yeah I do have my list of kind of 1520 go to sources. Yeah, well on that, on that note, there's one person I definitely follow on LinkedIn for all things macro, and that's john Norman. If you if you, you know if you listen to the end of this podcast episode or the series can't encourage you enough to follow john's work. You know it's super insightful, and I'm absolutely sure he doesn't mind you connecting with him, or following up any questions anything like that, but just a quick recap. In the three episodes. In this one we talked about attributes of good analysts associates that you've worked with, we've highlighted some of those factors about non traditional background newer credentials we've also talked about the perception and reality of working investment banking, work life balance, all of these super important things to think about to make the most informed decision for your future career, maybe what you're going to study and what you're going to do for the rest of your life so definitely go and listen through. I encourage you but yeah thank you so much john for giving up your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for the invitation myself the community super appreciate it and yeah we'll catch up soon. Great. Thank you very much.