Job experiences in Financial markets

My earlier threads are received lot of responses, so i desire to share some more thoughts on this.

A lot of professional are employed in jobs relating to Finanacial Markets, such as dealers (traders), back office personnel (involved in processing and maintenance of data), Risk Managers, Relationship Manageres, Analysts, programmers, Fund managers, bankers etc. Also Many in this forum are engaging people on such assignments. So both the groups, i.e. employees and the employers share their experiences, discuss and learn more on the opportunities.

I chat with one Mr. Khandelwal in this forum once, told me that he is a dealer with an MNC. His job involves day-trading in US Market on the company's account. Mostly he is trading in Berkley Hathway shares only. The assignment involves no fixed salary, but a share of the profits (in his case it is 40% of profit).

I believe that there are lot of such opportunities exists in the Financial Markets. If the users are the forum are willing to share such job related experiences (good or bad), i think other can also learn from that.

So far nobody expressed their thoughts on the jobs in the world of finance.
I see three major class of jobs,


first is the owners/top guys who are interested how the numbers swell, profits grow. They have the capital to establish and run the business

two are people who actually sitting on the front desk and deal in securities and other instruments.

third is the people support them with all kind of assistance, book-keeping etc.

fourth are the advisor category (Risk Managers, analysts) etc

In small firms, these roles may merge or sometimes disappear

In case of retail trader all these roles are merged into one, except that a good part of the jobs belonging to 2,3,4 are he is seeking support from outsiders mostly on charge basis.

One experience as advisor

It is a good discussion on advisory services. I have no experience directly or indirectly using any advisory services. Eventhough I listen to them in TV (CNBC, NDTV, UTV, ZEE, ET) also on sites (Moneycontrol, equitymaster, capital market, indiainfoline), I have never based on them, as support for investment decisions.

In this forum lot of learned and experienced guys are giving advises on day/swing/positional trading also on long term investing. I read a lot of good responses to such postings.

In past 4 years i had some occasions (rather i was compelled to) to give advice on investing in markets. they were done for 4 different friends, who were very enthusiastic about equity markets. All the 4 had used different brokers, also being advised by them too into investing around 1-4 lacs (for people in govt. service this is a good amount of money) and lost a good amount (around 10 - 40% of original capital). What I noticed in them is that, some stocks in their portfolios rise abnormally (may be 200-400% ) which prompt them to believe that other scrips too will rise some day, so that the portfolio value will cross the initial capital invested and grow many-fold.

The all the 4 advices had funny and unexpected outcomes

first person, after pestering me for nearly a month, had 2 sessions on his existing portfolio. He is a well-learned intelligent man, having a thorough reading of ET everyday, updated about developments in financial markets. He had around 3 Lac in investments, around 20 scrips in his portfolio, apart from 8-10 MF units. His combined losses were around 40% total investments.

I gave him some 'tips', as we call it

1. Limit your investments to 6-8 scrips in your portfolio. sell the insignificant/relatively unknown scrips and add to your existing selection of 6-8 good ones at lower prices. this averaging will help you in the long term. ( He had SBI, L&T, GAIL, Infosys, reliance etc in his portfolio).

2. All the scrips, likely price targets for sell and buy was given with a timeframe, based on whatever little knowledge I had. After spending a lot time on all these, I told him he may be able to cover his losses in a years time (May be if he is lucky enough, he may get some returns too)

3. Now the person wanted my advice on a few scrips (2-3 scrips - I think it was to test my ability as an advisor), again after spending time, I made a mix of 3 stocks as desired by him with the proportion and scrips

All this advice is given after spending a lot of time, efforts. Now let me explain the outcome after one year.

Advices 1 and 2 were ignored completely, and in case of 3 advices he picked up one (I think may be the name attracted him...). Observed the scrip going up for 10-20% up, and invested in the scrip at 20%+suggested price. Fortunately for him, that scrip went up around 15-20% in that month. He called up his brother (may be other relatives too) and invested some good sums in this. And as all of know, markets came down, 15-20% profits were erased in no time, turned into 25% loss in another month. still continue to hold on and even till date losses are just pared.

Some friends of mine too are "enthusiastic". I know how difficult it is to deal with newbies, especially who have nothing to do with the stock markets.

Mostly they have some success stories, which they have heard from their friends, relatives etc. So they venture into ..other 3 are different kind of experiences, which i plan to update at different point of time

Second experience i thought of posting today.

This friend of mine is a banker. At the point of investment advice (so i call it) from me, she has purchased stocks worth almost 2 lacs, faced some kind of error with the ICICI direct account.

She placed some limit order for some quantity (6 Nos of L&T - @1600 ) and during the day she observed that stock has moved up to Rs. 1598 and still her order was not executed. (I could not explain this..If anyone can pl help me to understand this) so she contacted the broker, but she could not get a satisfactory reply from them. Now she has switched the account to sharekhan.

The net loss in the portfolio was around 20% of the total money invested, some stocks have appreciated upto 200% and some have gone down upto 50%.

Having failed in the investment advice, i took to a different route this time.
I took the investment account password and user-id, bought some stocks, sold some stocks, may be covered around 40 K losses in around 4 months time.

But the client had a feeling that I had some trick or easy formula which is more like a trick. So she requested me how I have arrived at my decisions.
All my attempts to convince the person, it was sheer luck coupled with some experience and knowledge about the subject went in vain. Now we maintain a strained relationship, bordering enemity.