http://i-bankingblog.com Investment Banking for Beginners Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:25:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en An informative article on the career opportunities at proprietary trading houses was published at eFinancialCareers today. Drawing on information gleaned from contact with senior executives at houses like TCA Futures and Met Traders, the author describes the pros and cons, training and development opportunities, and of course, the financial benefits ... http://i-bankingblog.com/proprietary-trading-house-work-experience-a-cv-buster/ When you're running off Windows XP or Vista, technical analysis (TA) software abound. But make a switch to Linux, and all of a sudden, you have (almost) nothing left. Sure, you can always use web-based services, but they're never as responsive or full-featured as their desktop cousins. Thank god for Qtstalker ... http://i-bankingblog.com/qtstalker-technical-analysis-and-linux/ One way to learn about trading (any sort of vanilla financial instrument), and of course, win some prizes, is to participate in virtual trading competitions. They may not be the most realistic of systems, particularly given that most allow you to trade as if each instrument had almost unlimited volume, ... http://i-bankingblog.com/virtual-trading-competitions/ Just got an email from Milkround regarding how a "bad diet equals bad worker". Nothing really new to anyone who has skipped breakfast and lunch a few times before. £17 billion of lost productivity every year due to this seems a bit big, but heck, bad eating habits are certainly worth ... http://i-bankingblog.com/bad-eating-habits-kill-productivity-whats-new/ By now, anyone who even bothers with the financial markets would have read something about the subprime crisis. But it still remains interesting to track the development of the crisis to date. Both Reuters and Wikipedia have done the hard work for us. I'll just add a bit at the end ... http://i-bankingblog.com/subprime-crisis-timeline/ The corporate finance group is usually under the investment banking division umbrella. Often shortened to CorpFin, investment bankers in this group help companies with their capital investment decisions (longer-term decisions) and also working capital financing (shorter-term decisions). Refer to Merrill Lynch (Capital)'s CorpFin group web page for a real-life example. Perhaps ... http://i-bankingblog.com/corporate-finance-group-what-it-is-and-what-it-does/ While this is an investment banking-related blog, it would be instructive to explain the concept of a commercial bank, if only to contrast what they do with what investment banks do. At the same time, universal/integrated banks like Citi and JPMorgan can really only be understood after you understand both ... http://i-bankingblog.com/what-is-a-commercial-bank/ Ahhh... the inevitable interview. Right before an interview, there are usually two differing responses. One of confidence from the interviewee who has prepared intensively for the 30 minutes of grilling he/she is about to undergo, the other of sheer nervousness (and perhaps even fea) from the interviewee who thought you ... http://i-bankingblog.com/investment-banking-interview-resources/ There are several transcripts of discussions on investment banking career paths for graduates, primarily PhDs, just lying around the web unread. So, to give these useful resources a bit more exposure, I've pointed to some of them in this post. Individually, they don't shed that much information, but overall, if you're ... http://i-bankingblog.com/discussions-on-graduatephd-careers-in-investment-banking/ Books about the financial industry tend to be overly technical, and worst of all, dry for neophytes. But once in a while, books that are just right for people just starting out in the industry (or are thinking of doing so) do come along, and this book by Christopher Stoakes ... http://i-bankingblog.com/book-review-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-city/