martes, 30 de diciembre de 2008

My Roadtrip to Houston

I never realized how much I missed Houston until I came back this year. As I passed by certain streets, random memories began to pop up. Like where I used to drop off the pitch books for the MDs and Ds (Managing Directors of Investment banks, not medical doctors), shopping spots, concert spots, excellent restaurants, casual Sunday brunch places, salsa hideouts. And as I drove through these places, I began to channel how I was feeling at the time, 2 years ago, when I lived there. I was mostly stressed, anxious, worried, frazzled. It is always strange experiencing your past as a future you.

Anyways that's when I regretted not appreciating my job enough as an investment banker. It really was a neat job, albeit stressful. I liked the responsibility, the structure, the teamwork. Back then I just didn't have the maturity to handle the stress effectively, or to fully comprehend the meaning of everything I was doing. And now... I think I would like the job, but that's just because I understand myself a lot better now. I didn't back then.

So my trip to Houston started with a drive down to my favorite teahouse on Shepard and Westheimer. A few hours later, had dinner with a salsa friend, then left to another salsa party of for Terri's birthday at Byzantine Cafe.



There was quite a lot of dancing. But I can say, nothing feels better than working up a sweat dancing salsa for 3 hours (with people who can actually dance).


Photos courtesy of Facebook.

After the party, went out to drinks at Baker Street Pub with an old college friend from Louisiana. And the bar was so... Anglo Saxon, it was nice after so long in Spain. I really appreciate those English pubs with loud American music. Feels like home.

The next day was lunch at Hooters with Trey and then went to a coffee shop and did more work on the laptop. Was messaged by another friend from Tulane who *surprise!* was going to start grad school in Houston. It was amazing. It seemed like everyone I knew was in Houston. And I guess I missed it. Went out to for a midday snack with a realtor friend of mine from salsa class and then drove back home to Austin...

I have mixed feelings about Houston. I definitely missed the place, and it seemed like everyone I knew was there, and to stay. But on the other hand, I didn't really find what I was looking for when I was there. But the question is, would I find it anywhere else?

lunes, 29 de diciembre de 2008

My Quote of the Day

Just as the salmon knows not discouragement in its upstream journey, so should it be with any endeavor. One should sense a destiny and relentlessly pursue its realization despite its perceived impossibility.
- Daniel DiLorenzo

domingo, 21 de diciembre de 2008

Jan Simon's Management Lessons

Upon the last day of ADVIN class, Jan stood up and congratulated us for our hard work and determination. Then he gave us some words of wisdom when managing people, some words that resonated with me in his ALTIN hedgefund class. They are as follows:

1) Care for your employees
2) Take the role of mentoring seriously
3) Understand your responsibilities
4) When you have friends, think you have treasures
5) Management is not a popularity contest; your relationship with subordinates will not be the same as your relationship with your best friend
6) People make errors
7) If people don’t play ball, fire them
8) Stand up for and protect your employees
9) Choose your battles wisely
10) Be very selective when making enemies.

I knew that kind of thing came naturally to me. And that got me to thinking again about my life path, especially upon reading a paragraph from one of my books that goes a little like this:

“The main reason people get stuck in a rut is that they can’t let go of an unhealthy goal, a goal that is not truly in their hearts. Often these goals are core aspects of our self-definition.”

And I thought about my love-hate relationship with banking. It’s all I ever grew up believing that I was. It had become my identity, and it’s pretty scary to leave something like that behind. I think a lunch with a first year helped clarify my dreams. He was asking me for advice on attaining an internship with Pala Investments, the company I worked for over the summer. And as we got deeper into the conversation, he said something surprisingly honest, and genuine: “I just wish I could open up a bar in a great city, and relax, make drinks all night, take it easy.” And then I tilted my head up to the left, my day dream stance, and replied, “I wish I could just campaign for someone I really believe in. Travel around the world, promote him, meet new people everyday, get to know what they are interested in, and find out how my candidate can help them. The energy all around me. That would be really thrilling.”

And that’s when I thought…. I’m making progress.

Annex:

Yang’s Trading Words of Wisdom (from presentation in Jan Simon’s ADVIN class, one which the class could not keep from laughing the entire time - me the loudest):

“The Market is king and the devil. You are nothing.”

“Intrinsic value is crap…You don’t have to know everything about a company. It’s not your love.”

“You know what the 8th Sin is? Overconfidence. Never trust yourself. Just trust the market.”

And some Words of Wisdom from me:

“Considering all that’s happened in the markets these days, we often forget that the truly fortunate are those that wear their gold in their hearts and not on their sleeves.”


Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays.

viernes, 19 de diciembre de 2008

My Airport Adventures, Part III

It undeniably happens every time I fly from Barcelona to Austin: I get caught in some kind of airport shenanigans. So I arrive 2 hours early to my British Airways flight (after missing 3 flights out of this airport in the past 2 years and having lost more than 3,000 Euros in these types of mistakes, I try to avoid as much risk as I can.) At the Barcelona airport I do some light shopping at Massimo Dutti, and at the Heathrow Airport in London I decide to pick up a Josh Groban CD on a whim.

Well the British Airways flight was delightful. The first class seating looked incredible with its intricate maze of seats and spaciousness (too bad I was in coach) that I had never seen before. The coach seats were nice too. I got a few bloody marys gratis (I’m used to paying, this is strange and delightful to me) and wine with this pretty nice dinner. There were a lot of choices for movies and TV shows, even music. I chose to revisit the ABBA musical “Mamma Mia!” again and swooned from the red wine I had with dinner. (Honey Honey, how he thrills me, uh huh!) Later I ended up making a playlist of Mana songs from the touchscreen while I read my book. It was a very pleasant flight. Only funny thing was that the welcome pack they gave us had a toothbrush set in long black bullet casing that looked suspiciously like… not a toothbrush set.



Well I get to the Chicago airport an hour late, and the customs checks were taking a while, so it turned out I’d have to stay the night in Chicago. That, and they took my Spanish chorizo I was bringing back home for mom. Dammit.

So I’m at a hotel in Chicago writing this. I fly out to Austin in the morning. Tonight, it’s snowing outside. The streets are covered with beautiful white power. It is only the second time I have ever seen snow. It’s almost heavenly. But inside my hotel room, I crank up the heat, lay out on my king size bed and order room service: Asian noodles with Portobello mushrooms and a diet coke. I turn on the Josh Groban CD full volume and veg out. Life is good.

miércoles, 10 de diciembre de 2008

My Best Day of the MBA - A lesson in leadership

I think that you can learn a lot about a person by what makes them intrinsically happy (as opposed to extrinsic happiness which is influenced by external rewards, and transcendental happiness which is based on collective, more spiritual factors). So in the same spirit of intrinsic happiness, Wednesday, December 10th was probably the happiest day I've ever had at the MBA program IESE.

I awoke at 7AM, had a ride with Guillermo to Marketing class, it was our last class. The next class was Corporate Communications; when I walk in, late, the teacher marvels at "what a smart lady" I am (I had balls to make an impromptu speech which he said had bumped my grade significantly). I like that guy. I didn't get around to making my next speech about the influence of personality on the type of leader you become, but I figured I'd do it next time.

After class I went prepare for the hedge fund presentation we had to make for Jan Simon's Alternative Investment class. For 3 months, I volunteered in my first real leadership position in the MBA program, to lead a hedge fund team and manage alternative investments. At times it was a difficult task, and most of the team members I did not know much about personally, but by the end of the term we became quite close. I think I big part of it was because I enforced structure in the beginning, then autonomy afterward. I was not a micromanager or a bulldriver. I basically showed my team my own strengths and vulnerabilities, and I entrusted the team to express their own in order to cooperate and contribute fairly and effectively. This was a huge investment in trust. Usually, I have a problem with leadership, because I lack the confidence to make decisions, but in this class I took it easy and let my intrinsic love for Finance drive my choices.

For me, although a professional life is important, one's personal life should never be taken for granted. If someone had another commitment, we'd cover for him, and sometimes I had these commitments too. But what surprised me though, is that those who had to skip meetings always volunteered extra work for next time. I know that does not always happen. It showed respect, and I appreciated that. I know that not all the other teams was as cohesive as ours. They'd nominate 1 or 2 people to complete the investment ideas for that week so that the others could have a break. I know I could have done the same, but I wanted everyone to be involved in the whole process, even if it did take up more time. I also remember some people making horrendous trading errors (me included, I had accidentally bought Legg Mason instead of Lonmin, after which I promptly assigned the trading job to someone else), but my first reaction to that was not to worry, inform Jan of the mistake, and to remind everyone that these things happen - we are human. If we lose our ranking, getting angry won't help us get it back. I don't want anyone to ever be afraid to be completely themselves around me, to show me the good and the bad, or to express their creativity. I believe in this way they will give me their best, unedited, work. I found in this class, everyone's true strengths became apparent, and we ended up having a very complementary, well rounded team.

As my friend Matthew stated before, our fund "ate it" at the beginning, moving to second to last place, but then we jumped up to 3rd in the final results for absolute return. Well today we had to give our presentation. Steven and I would speak. I had on a pinstriped Zara suit and Massimo Dutti scarf, my power combo with a touch of femininity. I introduced the fund, our team, our investment style and process, then turned it over to Steven who explained the financials, a case study, risk management and other technicals. Then I closed and asked for the money. The judges were former IESE financial professionals and investment managers, and they were in charge of the monetary allocations to each of the 8 funds in the class, which would equate to 40% of the overall grade.


The Team at Work (missing: Yang Jin)


Now I will be honest: I am not a compelling speaker. Most of my speeches fall upon deaf ears with my audience looking down to check their blackberries as I enthusiastically speak about Law, trading or mutual funds. Apparently these topics are boring to most. (But hey, action movies are boring to me but apparently not to half the world population!) However I found that when speaking about Finance, to Finance professionals, I have found my niche. I guess I always thought of my speeches as boring, but that day, I was "professional." It was nice to hear.

After the speech, we had the annual "Copa de Cava" with the Dean in the new building. I listened to the Dean's heartfelt Christmas speech, then had some cava with the exchange students. This was a very happy moment for me, because I was around people I loved - and most of them had been the exchange students. They were all so open and appreciative of their time here. We all became so close. Although some had already left, it will be sad to see them go.

And as my professional life was finally fulfilling, my personal life was finally as well. I ended up having a nice dinner and some wonderful conversation, which I enjoyed very much. And at the end of the night, my Brazilian wish came true.

I came home and checked my email to find the following email from Jan:

Hi Ann,

Your final allocation is USD 280 Mio. With the distribution being as follows:

1. USD 280 Mio
2. USD 230 Mio
3. USD 200 Mio
4. USD 190 Mio
5. USD 90 Mio
5. USD 90 Mio
7. USD. 60 Mio
7. USD 60 Mio

As said in class I think this year has been the strongest so far. A testimony of this is that all teams got money allocated. Other years we had between 2 and 4 teams which left without any allocation. So for the entire class it is a job well done. I was very pleased with the quality of yours and others presentation.


Many thanks and all the best to your team members.

Merry Christmas,
Jan

We got top allocation! I really couldn't believe it. And that's when I thought, this must be what happiness feels like, just for me.

lunes, 8 de diciembre de 2008

"The Square Root of Three," A Poem by Kumar Patel

I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
The love for me has been renewed