How would you describe your role to someone outside of the finance industry?
I’m an Executive Director in Equity Research. I analyze US stocks, and have recently been focusing on tech stocks. With a team of analysts and associates I collect data, build financial models, and publish reports on our views.
What is a typical day like for you?
The first thing I do is read the news. There's a fire hose of news, of course, so filtering out the most important stories is a huge way in which we add value. I summarize the key news stories and speak to clients about our recent research reports. Then there are bigger Blue Papers that are collaborative pieces. We always have something like that in the pipeline. A lot of my day is spent gathering information and putting together those bigger reports—picking out data points, updating models, and analyzing historical trends compared to the forecast for the market.
What would you say is the most exciting project you’ve worked on at Morgan Stanley?
I was on the financials team and we were covering a stock that everyone was underweight on. After a major news event, the stock nearly doubled and we had investors calling us saying, “What do we do from here?” We took a step back and thought about how to analyze the situation. We turned the phones off and spent the weekend writing a report that said, here’s what has historically happened with other investment firms, this is what applies to the stock and this is where we put our new price target. We found a thoughtful conclusion to a question no one knew how to answer.
What would you say is the end result of your work?
We expose new data points that the market might be missing. One of the best things that we can do is write a note that really highlights a point that has been keeping the stocks down. When I was working on my financials team, we wrote a report on a company that said their long-term financial targets, which everyone thought were crazy, really weren’t crazy at all. We outlined how to achieve them and the next day the stock was up 10%. We really made an impact. Morgan Stanley is a leading franchise—we have some of the best minds on Wall Street and we articulate points that matter a lot to the markets.
How would you describe the collaborative culture of Morgan Stanley?
My team is very focused on collaborative work. We work closely with our team in Asia, getting a unified view on what’s happening in China, for instance, and seeing how that affects the US. It’s incredibly important to have a very strong and open dialogue—we have calls at least once a week where the teams talk about the latest data points we’re seeing and how they could be affecting each other’s coverage. Working internationally and across different departments is very common here.
What are your hobbies and interests outside of work?
I really enjoy running. We tried to get a group from our department to do a relay race out in Cape Cod, because I’ll always go to the gym after work and run into someone else. Knowing that you guys share some of these common interests is great. I like to skateboard. When my friends in college found out I was going to work in a bank, they all said, “look our little Wall Street skateboarder.” I also really like photography, which I studied in high school and college. Especially landscape photography, when you can capture that bigger view.
What’s something that may surprise a recent graduate about starting a career at Morgan Stanley?
People really care about others here. They take the time to make sure that you’re happy and that you’re being offered every opportunity possible. When I first got here so many people reached out to me to grab a cup of coffee, see how I liked my first week and give me advice. I always knew I wanted to be in finance, but I wasn't sure which part. Whenever I would talk to someone from Morgan Stanley, they would say, “Here’s my experience, but I have a buddy in another department. Shoot them a message and see if they can spend a couple minutes talking with you.” They were willing to help someone that they didn’t even really know.