Bad to pursue if having a family is very important to you?
In the beginning it is. After you get established, it’s more like 11- 12 hour days. The hard part is you can’t control the work needed on weekends or holidays. And that continues.
Yes - very time consuming. Anywhere between 60-90 hours per week. On a daily basis expect 12 hour days. But the pay is phenomenal.
@villanovagirl Is pay “really” phenomenal? When you factor in 60+ hour work weeks, the up-or-out promotion structure, and the cost of living…
Sure, the few people who last in the field have phenomenal income, but I’m not convinced that IB produces a “phenomenal” outcome for your average entry level IB analyst at the 50th percentile.
If the concept of “weekend” is meaningful to you, then IB is not for you.
The very high pay will help when you have to pay alimony and child support.
You might want to consider trading. A lot less hours. But you do have to have nerves of steel and be able to make quick decisions. Easier hours, probably more stress. More potential money?
Ex wall street trader here. most of the sellside trading jobs are either being phased out as most trading is going online or being consolidated away due to the Volcker rules. Furthermore, extremely low spreads and volumes and very high regulatory and compliance burdens are crushing any hopes of making serious dough anymore. Do not bother thinking of trading as a career anymore - perhaps focus on being a research analyst. they transition to becoming PMs and have long balanced and profitable careers.
I am not a trader, so I respectfully defer to what khanam says. However my D1 is a trader and just bought her own million dollar Manhatten apartment at age 27. If she loses her job in the next few years, she could probably sell her UES apartment in less than a week.( Manhatten real estate was still doing ok in the last "“great” recession) She has already saved more for retirement than most baby boomers and has a very good amount of other savings. She has no debt, other than her mortgage, which she could eliminate with a sale.
So right now, she is doing very well financially, living a very comfortable life, traveling the world, doing a good deal of philanthropic work and just living a great life. If it ends in a few years, she will have had wonderful experiences, saved a lot and would probably get a PhD and become a college professor. Haha, the last part is totally made up by me, her parent.
So I still think trading is an option.
I honestly don’t know many jobs in the finance field and what they are. Would one of you mind explaining what a trader does, education things like that? Is it the same as an investment banker?
Thank you!
Sure. An investment banker advises companies on capital market transactions and M&A activity.
A trader risks the firm’s balance sheet to take positions in securities and to make markets to institutional clients such as mutual funds, insurance companies and hedge funds. Bear in mind there are also salespersons - they are more of a conduit between the traders and clients - communicating the prices the trader makes. They typically live off of commissions on trades in smaller firms. Their job is to convince clients to do trades with the firm.
The education of all of the above is the same. A banker, however, has more interpersonal skills and has a client driven thought process. A trader is more mathematically analytical, able to process more discrete pieces of information and typically has a lot more willingness to be in a volatile environment. A salesperson kind of straddles both methodologies being the voice of the trading desk.
There are still some trading jobs but it is much safer to embark on your career from the research side. To the extent that trading is going onscreen, you do not need as many salespersons or traders. Research Analysts are much more valuable since that is how you differentiate yourself from competitors and the good ones always get hired away by the big hedge funds etc.