vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
I was clarifying a point someone else made. I don't take any ownership of the claim, however none of what I said is particularly far fetched, especially considering [Wal-Mart has a net income of close to $16,000,000,000 annually](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=WMT+Income+Statement&amp;annual)  Also, I didn't say that the job *deserves* higher pay. In addition, there's no reason I can see why a pay increase would result in Wal-Mart laying off 30-50% of its workforce. They either need the manpower to operate the stores or they don't, and that financial statement would indicate that they could absorb a slight increase in overhead.  Sorry for the way you were treated there, particularly the 39hr55min a week part. I don't know the ins and outs of Wal-Mart's policies, but I'm guessing this was a way to circumvent a policy that grants certain benefits to 40/hr week workers?
"Background: I live and work in a small city (250k) and want to work somewhere much larger (New York, London, Chicago, Sydney). Ideal job is something quantitative and related to programming/analytics in finance, though I have passed the CFA Level III Exam to show my interest in the field and currently work as a systems and database analyst (job title is ""Senior financial analyst"".) I have a Master's in mathematical finance but my work mostly relates to personal side projects.  Questions:  Short of packing up and moving, what is an effective way to network with people from these larger cities?  Is there demand for quants and junior quants, or is there too much supply? Will I need to get a PhD to be relevant? Can I transfer my background or skills into another area of finance first to get the networking contacts?"
Hello, feel free to remove this if it doesn't belong here. I am a journalist and I am looking to get more involved in tech and finance related things, so this is where I am starting. **What are some finance-related stories that you believe are not being covered in the news well enough?**
People romanticize it. I just finished a prestigious MBA and the number of people who were obsessed with PE found it to be this super sexy niche of finance. If you are a partner it can be great, but it takes a long time to get there and necessitates you being on the ground floor of the firm. Otherwise its ibanking with better hours/pay.
They likely have an intern (job title) pay-scale that maxes out somewhere below $30/hr in order to meet the FLSA (that exempt vs non-exempt stuff you were seeing). As a PhD student, you could probably negotiate up into the ~$25/hr range, but from a benefits standpoint, they might not be able to pay you $35/hr without making you an exempt, full-time employee.
&gt; Show me proof that Microsoft's starting salaries are over $100k. The last figure I saw was $86k.  That figure must be several years old - $86k base pay sounds about the range they were paying in 2006 or so. About a year ago Microsoft handed out massive across-the-board pay raises to everyone to bring their salaries in line with those offered by Apple and Google. But obviously like all companies they keep the exact figures hidden from public.  About two years ago I knew some college graduates going to work for Microsoft, and they were already in the $90k range even before the sweeping pay raises which happened mid last year.  And this is all of course all referring to base pay and doesn't count bonuses. Because of the way Microsoft's review process works, almost everyone receives a bonus at the end of the year. 90% of engineers at MS will receive as a bonus 10-20% of their annual salary in cash, and an additional 10-20% of their annual salary in stock.  Now people don't usually count those when comparing base pay, but if you want to look at total compensation it's *easily* past six figures even if you assume a really low base pay like $86k.
Depends on how you supplement the major. I had people taking things like 'marketing' or 'business management' with their finance majors to get good marks, but they didn't get internships like I did because I was willing to take statistics, economics, risk management, accountancy etc... In general you want to have a strong math background, a good understanding of economics, and accountancy. Also if I could go back I would have done computer science at least at first year level to get a feel for coding and modeling.  Edit: I should clarify I don't have a permanent job, I'm just speaking from my experience of holiday internships with investment banks.
I am a financial analyst now for a fortune 500 company, about to graduate a rotational program. Every company has financial analysts, and finance is a great field to be in right now. Think about what you would want in an analyst. Math, stats, strong writing and analytical skills, proven experience (internships) and desire to learn are great. I interned at a bank and defense contractor and attempted to start a small business in college, speaking to what I learned was what helped me during interviews
"Well, you mentioned McKinsey earlier and that's a consulting firm.  All of them draft from the Ivy's (plus the other top tiers) but it also helps to come from a school that is well known but not an Ivy. (NYU comes to mind)  My friends from CUNY Honors Baruch got jobs in accounting pretty easily as CUNY Baruch has programs set up with different companies and a fairly established network in the accounting field. It's pretty good if all you want to do is accounting.   In my experience, there's less of a ""prestige"" focus with IB's and accounting firms. The top consulting firms, on the other hand, are quite ""prestige"" focused. (worked in one that hired 80-90% from top tiered schools)  It's hard to put an umbrella statement over everything because there are exceptions. And, networking can trump everything.  You should be less concerned about schools and more about grades. A brand name won't help if you have an average GPA. To that point, take a major you'd do well at. Statistics, computer science, mathematical engineering are in demand but your major won't help if the work is too difficult/uninteresting leading to lower grades."
Essentially, yes.  The parent company aggregates the business of all its subsidiaries; so there's ArcelorMittal Brazil, ArcelorMittal USA, ArcelorMittal Spain, etc.  So all of their companies put together turned a profit, but the one you work for in particular  (ArcelorMittal USA) wasn't profitable this quarter.
TL;DR: Income is how much you make, net worth is the value of all your assets: cash, real estate, stocks, etc.  With the case of Buffett: Berkshire Hathaway's - Buffett's company - market capitalisation is ~$460 Billion. Buffett controls 18% of shares. $460B x 18%: ~$80 Billion.  So we can estimate that a large part of his net worth is tied up in BH stock (obviously this isn't perfect either as there are other factors at play here).  BUT this is only on paper. Ie yes he's worth that, but he doesn't really have $80 Billion somewhere in a bank. He gets the money to live from other personal investments and business means.
Man it's amazing that the banker's solution is to cut their workforce from 16,000 to 2,000. Sure it'll look good on the balance sheet but that would be pretty much the death nail to an already struggling company. And people wonder why everyone is so jaded about these idiots on Wall Street.
I think I understand them better than you ;-).  A place that puts a prime value on making money ought not be embarrassed by income numbers, right?  And yet there's doublethink: the instant you walk into the door at work, you're supposed to pretend it's all for the love of the job rather than for the money, that the money is so irrelevant as to be taboo.
Well, as far as anecdotal evidence goes, my SO is working on a undergraduate finance degree at U of T, and has been hired at the Canadian office of a large American bank, in a field related to IB.  That said, if it's possible to be hired at the Canadian office of an American bank, presumably it is possible to apply and 'cross-over' to an American branch in the future - all you need is to be able to get your foot in the door, and be re-hired to another position as an insider, with references from your MD, Director and Associate.  Another piece of anecdotal evidence is that many of her superiors have degrees in other subject areas. The reality is, they're looking for smart people - pedigree is probably reasonably unimportant.  I'm not sure if this information is transferable to work as a quant, though. In many ways, your discipline would be more technical, or skill based, and require less 'character' from the applicant, and more competency.  As for Montreal.. the only two schools pedigreed Americans know of are McGill and U of T, generally in that order (everyone will know of McGill, and about half of those people will know of U of T). I can imagine that either of the two schools would be an excellent choice - I am biased toward U of T for personal reasons, and also because it is located directly beside Bay Street, so the networking opportunities for the widest variety of international banks (and private wealth managers) are definitely there, but I wouldn't knock McGill, from a reputation perspective.   I think the reality is that while you should consider your options *carefully*, whatever option you choose will be based on a lot of over-thinking - it's unavoidable, and a good thing, but ultimately, I imagine, meaningless. If you're smart, driven and connected, you *will* get the job, regardless of which of those two schools you choose.
headcounts... I racked 12k in overtime compensation last year, asking the superiour why we wouldn't simply hire someone, seeing that the whole team worked under the same conditions, the answer was, headcount wouldn't get approved, while he was able to get the overtime compensation approved due to sourcing the funds from a different budget, getting a new perm proves difficult - especially if you function in a matrix. it's corporate politics that requires a fight, that only few superiours will risk, if it's not them haging over the edge as a result &amp; a damn shame, if you ask me, seeing that there are so many young well educated people not having any work at all. if you think the extra bucks is nice: working years on overtime bears cost, that's not worth the money - on the other hand, you also have people that have to work overtime without having the choice of compensation.
According to pretty well accepted corporate finance principles. They're mature/maturing companies with large durable noncyclical cash flow streams. Increasing their debt load and distributing the proceeds to shareholders would lower their after tax cost of capital and increase the value of their equity. IMO operating with such under levered balance sheets is nonoptimal. It's subjective though.
Weren't they one of the healthy banks during the financial crisis? I wonder what keeps them ahead of the pack or if the actual J. P. Morgan had any advise that they still adhere to today. I'm sure being part of a powerful organization that has shaped the financial industry has it perks in terms of having insider knowledge of how the innards of the industry work.
Indian workers are hard to manage.   I work in Japan as a consultant managing offshore development projects. The Indian companies are not doing that well here. They cannot deliver, and the Indian companies themselves are very slow to move. They are not even landing the jobs because Indian expat execs are too slow.   I have noticed that they are using development centers in the US and China as well to support global contracts. The reason is that Indian workers stay on the job for little longer than 3 mos before they move onto a better position. They are only interested in status climbing because the companies are nickeling and diming them while management charges much the same as a local Japanese integrators.  On the few occasions they have tried to recruit me, even though I agreed to take a salary reduction (lehman shock) and meet their conditions, they were too wishy washy made the proposal late and never hired me. Overall way too flaky.
Got job at top 10 bank out of college.  First year as analyst I also got involved in college recruiting.  There were many discussions on what schools to recruit from.  Seemed to be a combo of best reputations, highest rankings, and schools some senior executives went too.  Our bank had dedicated recruitment at about 10 to 15 schools.  If you got into the analyst program outside of that it was through some connection.  If memory serves me, these were the colleges we recruited from.  Harvard Yale MIT Dartmouth Brown Cornell Princeton Columbia Duke Nyu Stanford Ucla Cal  Think nyu the easiest school that gets dedicated recruiters due to it's size and location.  My bank had more west coast and southern focus than other banks.  I believe northwestern and u of Chicago get recruited from banks with large Chicago offices.
"There's no way to confirm this anecdote I'm about to say tell you guys.  However, I'm a computer programmer.  I went for a job interview a few years ago at a top-tier bank.  When they sat me down for the interview.  They told me that their job was to take a rich person's income and let's say they pay 40% in tax.  They'll move it around so that they pay 20% in tax.  Also, these banks ... a lot of the programmers are earning 550-650 per-day and that's in pound sterling.  These programmers will create a company and pay themselves the lowest salary rate.  So they will avoid as much tax as possible because it's their ""company"".  Those programmers aren't in the millionaire range though.  They're probably just pulling over 100,000 pounds a year taxed at a really low rate.  After working with them ... you can't make any of these guys feel anything."
Thank you very much for the response!  I re-read my original post after your statement and realized that you are right, I did seem rather vague, naive, and a bit lost out there. I did some research (not a lot) but I don't think it was really reflected in my post which is why I edited my comment.  Thank you for your responses. I did look at a lot of the links you posted. I think I really didn't word my thoughts properly in the original post. I understand the basic differences - which seem to be that strategy is working on corporate vision while finance is managing a company's money.   Honestly, I guess I posted this with the hopes of just seeing some more personal and detailed responses, and really wasn't exactly too sure about what I want myself. I appreciate the links you've posted though and this is a very detailed response so thank you very much!  Edit: Oh, and I upvoted your first response. I think you could have criticized my naivety a bit more nicely but I don't think you deserve the downvotes since my original post did seem very naive :/
If you just took money and banking you should probably be aiming for the sales end of the job. The trading end they're going to want you to know about option spreads (I remember my old Prof said [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes) was always good to know for finance interviews), annuities, financial statement analysis, and all that fun stuff. Either way flaunt your other skills and knowledge as well - accounting, technology, blah blah blah
"They are under the radar, but are very strong in Europe and Asia. Deal size will be middle market transactions in North America, a stark contrast to its accounting clients.   The good: -established pipeline from accounting and consulting partners &amp; contacts -much better work life balance than most IBs, no 100 hour weeks -widely known name brand -experience working on more than straight forward sell side deals; people underestimate the knowledge and skills you learn through being involved in turnarounds, refinancings, buy side advisory, etc.  Cons: -exit opportunities are more limited -pay will be below street -partner ""buy in"" can be incredibly frustrating  I will say that generally KPMG prefers CPAs (even for non-accounting positions) and requires 3-4 years of experience. But, considering you have the interview, they felt you were worth talking with."
shitlawjobs.com gives a sobering look into current entry-level salaries in law positions. I recently got shat on on here for saying $12/hr is too much to pay Subway employees, but some of these legal positions don't pay any better.
When I was looking for positions and they brought up salary, I always gave a range with what I wanted at the low end and then add on 20-40k to the high end.    Example 90-130, oh, wow, we can't pay 130, would 95 be ok?  sure, that's in my range, sounds great.  My 2nd job MANY moons ago they asked the same question, I gave a range (too narrow) and they gave the top end of the range, I knew I asked for too little....  My current company has salary bands which encompass a job title and a salary range, and the job title's ranges can overlap: ex: Junior 20-60, Regular: 40-90, Senior: 60-120, Lead: 100-160.  This allows for regional variances in cost of living and for raises without a promotion into a new band.
What do you want to do with your degree?  Corporate finance? Investment banking? Wealth management?  It all depends on that. Having said that here are some ideas that are useful in a wide variety of scenarios:  1. Accounting, accounting, accounting. Whether you are at an I-Bank or a mid-cap consumer goods company, knowing as much accounting as possible can be hugely helpful. Ive interviewed for jobs at all kinds of companies and one thing that always works on interviewers is showing them you have intimate knowledge of accounting rules.  2. Excel/information system courses. Knowing Excel inside and out and/or some of the more widely used information systems out there can give you a nice little bump in interviews  3. Statistics. Statistics teaches you how to think. Even if you never run a regression again in your life, some of the general principles you learn in stats are absolutely priceless. Not just for work but for *life*. Knowing why you need to control for variables, why samples work, etc. can be a hugely helpful thing not just at work but in dealing with life decisions and sorting through information.  Some people here are telling you to learn how to program. That's useful if you want to be a quant or if you want to keep the door open to potentially moving into a quant/data analytics job in the future and that's about it. Companies hire software engineers to do the coding. If you intend to work as an investment banker or a wealth manager, for example, Java wont help you a lick. Let the engineers worry about writing the code. Focus on the stuff that actually moves your career forward and dont try to be everything. If you absolutely want to do something software-related then learn SQL. At least in some shops (particularly corporate finance jobs) you might from time to time be able to use it to query some database or another, although again at most companies there are entire armies of well-paid people providing the necessary interfaces and tools to prevent you from having to do that.
We're probably thinking of different jobs. I have read countless stories of how if you want to be an investment banker or a quant, you need to go to an ivy league school and be at the top of your class. But I have also heard that many traders are more akin to blue-collar workers, and only need the gusto.
From what I've seen, balance is great. 10 hour days usually unless things get crazy. But the salary potential seems great too. 100k with bonus as an analyst/associate for 10 hour days seems like a great gig. Plus, you're reporting to the CRO which gives great visibility
"Great question. There are several reasons; I'm going to list the few that I can think of off the top of my head right now. First, even if institutional bank holdings in such a term account are covered by deposit insurance (this, as well as the amount covered, varies geographically), the amount covered is generally trivial when seen in the context of bank holdings. An individual might have on the order of $1,000 - $10,000 in such an account; for a bank, that's basically chump change, and you are looking more at numbers in the millions of dollars range. Sometimes a lot more than that. For a large bank, even hundreds of millions of dollars might be a relatively small portion of their holdings. The 2011 Goldman Sachs annual report (I just pulled a big bank out of thin air, here; no affiliation with them that I know of) states that as of December 2011, their excess liquidity was 171,581 million US dollars (over 170 billion dollars), with a bottom line total assets of $923,225 million (a shade under a trillion dollars) book value. Good luck finding a bank that will pay you 4% interest on even a fraction of such an amount. GS' income before tax in 2011 was a shade under 6.2 billion dollars; 4% on 170 billion dollars is 6.8 billion dollars. That is, the interest payments at such a rate on their excess liquidity alone would have cost more than they themselves made in the entire year, which is completely unsustainable. Government bonds are as guaranteed as deposit-insurance-covered bank accounts (it'll be the government that steps in and pays the guaranteed amount, quite possibly issuing bonds to cover the cost), but (assuming the country does not default on its debt, which happens from time to time) you will get back the entire amount plus interest. For a deposit-insured bank account of any kind, you are only guaranteed (to the extent that one can guarantee anything) the maximum amount in the country's bank deposit insurance; I believe in most countries, this is at best on the order of $100,000. If the bank where the money is kept goes bankrupt, for holdings on the order of what banks deal with, you would be extremely lucky to recover even a few percent of the principal.
Hey, not really related, but could I ask you some questions through PM? I'm a rising junior majoring in finance and minoring in stats with interests in corporate banking/credit risk, but I'm really interested in the buy-side work you do/your dealflow experience/industry expertise/analyst experience before Associate
"It looks like these types of companies have to disclose the health of their accounts to CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). That is the gist I get at least from this article about the traders that lost money due to the Swiss removing the franc’s cap against the euro. The article says about the U.S. retail FOREX brokerage: Most of FXCM’s retail clients lost money in 2014, according to the company’s disclosures mandated by the CFTC. The percentage of losing accounts climbed from 67 percent in the first and second quarters to 68 percent in the third quarter and 70 percent in the fourth quarter. Side note: The Swiss National Bank abandoned the cap on the currency's value against the euro in mid-January 2015. But above paragraph provides data on FXCM’s retail clients in 2014. It could consequently be concluded that, even without ""freak events"" (such as Switzerland removing the franc cap), it is more likely for an investor to NOT make a profit on the FOREX market. This is also in line with what ""sdfasdf"" and ""Dario Fumagalli"" say in their answers."