From D-Student with Zero Experience, to Trading At Goldman Sachs: My Story
Unconventional Path Into Finance, Approach to Trading & Markets, Commentary on Crisis of Careers in Disruption Era (Presentation at Temple University Japan | March 28, 2024)
To Across The Spread subscribers, followers, and supporters (past present and future)-
This is among the my most important of any previous content I have published.
This is for YOU.
Forget the “interesting story.” Each of you consumers of my thoughts, commentary and content - you need to know who I am, where I’m coming from, my values, and perhaps most importantly - why I am the way I am with my differentiated approach to markets and analysis. For better or worse, you need to know, and I need you to know.
My full presentation to the investment club at Temple University Japan Campus on March 28, 2024 - this allows me to discuss what I never typically do.
Contingency Planning: my “religion” for markets, trading, & careers (risk management)
My Background: Bottom academics, no institutional experience, no markets knowledge, move to Tokyo with nothing → Goldman futures trading desk → Jefferies equity sales
Trading Markets: Learn about YOURSELF WITHIN MARKETS (& not markets themselves). Pay market tuition & never take a market loss. BIG WINS are produced by: Luck + Prioritize focus, effort & intended mindset upon mitigating BIG LOSSES + Luck
Career Commentary: Preparing for the Coming Crisis of Major Widespread & Permanent Job Destruction from Disruption - the risk of specialization, expertise & experience. Contingency Planning.
Q&A: Advantage of NOT being Ivy League.
The main purpose of this is not simply self promotion (though let’s be frank, of course it very much is self promotion - though unavoidably so when discussing my own self, which is why in 4 years of public content creating, you seldom/never see anything like this from me).
Again, this is directly applicable to many of you in each of your own unique and individual ways - this is meant to help. Particularly the last section about career risk management (finance or otherwise) in a coming era of massive disruption and normalized change.
So- I am adding the following…
Additional commentary (not in video):
I don’t think I was very clear in this presentation of how everything I discuss is tied together - so I want to make sure my message is getting across.
When I talk about contingency planning, and my route into institutional finance, and “crossing off the big losses” quadrant - I am addressing how to approach to this coming catastrophe of permanent layoffs and career displacement across industries and sectors.
Be it A.I. or otherwise, tech progression only goes one way: forward.
And when it does, existing roles, skills, and needs for people to execute various tasks get altered accordingly - and often lead to no longer needing people to conduct such work.
Previously through history until relatively recently, we could more or less take a 5-10 year view forward and know what the world will look like, and then amidst that, maybe something would inject itself into rattling procedure, and society realigns around it - that was the norm.
That is no longer - now, the norm is being in a state of perpetual change - the static days are over. It’s now a matter of what the pace of what change occurs.
Here’s how it relates to my finance story.
Unless you’re in the tiny minority of being on cutting edge of tech and doing the disruption yourself (and “disruption” is just another word for “efficiency” in time, cost, quality, energy, scale etc) - the rest of us are subject to these external forces of tech and change. And unless we are one of these “insiders” of tech innovation, our careers are potentially at existential risk. This is the equivalent of what my mid 2008 crisis moment of realization was - that the too big to fail financial institutions/industry ran the world, were more powerful than governments, and posed existential threats to the entire global economy and employment EX-finance. Just replace “too big to fail finance” with “tech/innovation/A.I.”
And so I made a very pragmatic assent that for the sake of job security, I need to be employed by a too big to fail bank - as every other job / industry / line of work is at the mercy of what the spillover effects of these institutions, and when things go south, it is those jobs and ONLY those jobs that the powers that be (in this case - governments/central banks) will move heaven and earth to preserve - as they too faced direct threat of calamity if finance isn’t saved.
And, despite being a complete outsider with zero “qualifications” - I felt the risk of remaining static and outside of too big to fail finance was far greater than any risk of uprooting everything I know in my comfort zone and attempting to get in. This was an industry and world (literally- as a lifetime NY’er moving to the other side of the planet) that I had zero knowledge of its workings, of how they talk, of anything. But, against traditional sense, I made the move, taking comfort in being able to say to myself that no matter what the outcome is, at least I tried everything I could for the sake of long term job security in this financialized world. And also to purposely remove myself from my comfort zone at my own will- doing that can only strengthen and prepare myself for WHEN the next ‘08 crisis comes and abruptly forces me out of whatever my then-comfort zone will be.
And this is the core of my message to these young aspiring individuals at Temple, AND to every one of you as well. You don’t have to do anything if you are secure in your stance, or if you don’t share my view of future jobs at risk. But if you are concerned or outright paranoid as I was in ‘08 about the future of my own job security - there are proactive things you can do. What those things are are completely unique to each and every circumstance - but the point is that you don’t have to just accept some externally determined fate.
Just be very pragmatic, objective and unemotional - are you and your specialized career at risk? In what way? And what happens if your specialization is no longer deemed necessary - overnight? Do you have a contingency plan? And if you do feel at risk, and can’t craft a contingency plan (as not every situation has a perfect hedge available) - then it’s entirely possible to make what may be a drastic change in course, and put yourself into the unknown- just as I had done. It doesn’t even matter if it results in “success” (however defined) - it’s the very act itself - disruption, but self-disruption on your own terms vs forced disruption at the hands of something else. It’s not at all disruption all the same.
That’s my message. And I know that “do not blindly follow the traditional paths in career planning, now more than ever before” is not a message that neither these students nor anyone will hear. But I can’t in good conscience parrot such a message, as it doesn’t even align with my own lived experiences, actions, and philosophies - extreme outlier as it may be.
Also, this is not “fear mongering” or whatever the fuck nonsense I also receive when I present this. You have every right to refute and reject any/all of the above - I know it’s controversial. But I have nothing to gain from sharing any of this - if anything, I put myself at risk of sounding irresponsible or what have you (by the serious people, not the anonymous clowns that I ignore). But this is my genuine message - and anything else out of me would be irresponsible as I see it.
Any subscribers who want to reach out to me about this, please do so - as I tend to always get messages whenever I discuss this topic. I don’t have any answers - all I have is a different angle to consider.
Thanks all,
Weston
Thanks Weston - inspiring - and I knew part of your story. I love the way you went all in - moving to Tokyo, and then GS.
Just putting a thought/question out there - the analogy between your statement in bold ...."finance bigger than govt....." and tech/innovation/AI is now doing the same disruption is interesting in that - to me - it makes me wonder, who would win in a fight - AI/tech or Finance? Just putting the two scenarios head to head in a battle.
Not saying they can't co-exist - AI will disrupt finance of course, but how far will it get....?
I haven't really thought it through, don't know the inner workings of the markets at ground zero to know what can be algorised or not.... I follow the algo's (an art not a science) and kow this has been in the works since the 90's. Yet the total crisis-like disruption ?
After automating things - what is the end game? Risk control would be something it could do better than GS you'd imagine? So, like - AI predicting the future? Controlling supply and demand via prediction rather than actual production/consumption?
I've no idea...