Most Important Skills For a Senior Investment Manager at a Global Investment Firm
A senior investment manager's success hinges on "intellectual curiosity," a drive to constantly learn and understand the nuances of business and the economy, coupled with strong critical thinking skills to sift through vast amounts of data and discern useful information. The ability to interpret financial statements and approach challenges with humility, acknowledging that mistakes are inevitable and learning from them, is also vital for career longevity in this field.
Intellectual Curiosity, Critical Thinking, Numeracy, Humility, Financial Analysis
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Vasant Mehta
Senior Investment Manager
Global Investment Management Company
U.C. Berkeley
Johns Hopkins University : M.A. International Economics and European Studies
Political Science, American Studies
Finance (Banking, Fintech, Investing)
Finance
Honors Student
Video Highlights
1. Intellectual Curiosity: The ever-changing investment world demands continuous learning and a drive to understand the nuances of businesses and economic situations.
2. Critical Thinking: Investment professionals must analyze vast amounts of data, separating useful information from noise and assessing the validity and underlying narratives.
3. Numeracy: While a finance PhD isn't required, comfort with numbers, financial statements, and basic mathematical concepts is essential for making informed investment decisions.
Transcript
What skills are most important for a job like yours as a senior investment manager?
There are three key skills someone needs for this type of role. The first is intellectual curiosity. The investment world is not boilerplate; nothing follows an exact template.
Your primary role is to understand the world and the situation of the business you're examining. You need to assess similarities and differences with the past. This is driven by innate intellectual curiosity, a desire to constantly learn and understand the mechanics of businesses and the economy.
The second skill is critical thinking. There's a vast amount of data in the world and much more comes at you as an analyst or investment manager. Your objective is to parse this data, separating what's useful from what isn't.
Even with potentially useful data, you must make an assessment. You receive information from companies, peers, and other market participants. You cannot take any of this at face value.
You need to evaluate what's being told to you, understand the narrative, and decide if you agree. Equally important is assessing what is *not* being told and how that fits into the overall story. Critical thinking is a key attribute.
The third skill is numeracy. You need some numerical skills, but not necessarily a PhD in finance. Most people in this field do not have one.
What you do need is a comfort level with numbers. Be comfortable with basic arithmetic and algebra. You should be able to look at financial statements and understand their meaning and the story behind them.
You also need to consider how to mathematically represent qualitative data in a model. This is a skill that can be learned on the job, so you don't need to be fully conversant beforehand. However, having that comfort factor and a desire to learn is important.
Fourth, while not strictly a skill, humility is essential. It ties into everything because you will inevitably get things wrong in the investment world. This experience will humble you.
When you make mistakes, the only thing that will drive you forward is your intellectual curiosity. You'll want to understand what happened and why you were so off the mark. You then need to rethink the entire situation and continue the learning process, which is perpetual.