Confessions of a Cat-holic (195)

I didn't need the prestige of IBD to live an extravagant baller life playing golf and sipping red wine in a yacht club on the weekends (if only they had time). Such high end life didn't appeal to me. I wanted a stable job with a normal life. I didn't need a banker boyfriend who would wed me to look straight, while going to brothels for sex with a transgender.

Through talking to the people within the financial industry across the spectrum, the more risk-averse and therefore stable insurance companies were considered the dummies in the financial industry, just like how New Jersey was always poked fun of by the New Yorkers. But I liked the greenery garden state, way more than the big red apple. I heard that Goldman hunted the insurance companies down like a beast robbing a moron. Goldman sold to the insurance companies all the junk securities and defined the insurance guys as "the bottom of the food chain" with much self affirmation. Goldman only wanted to kiss ass to their marquee clients: the sophisticated institutional investors like hedge funds and private equity players including but not limited to Blackstone, Citadel or Bridgewater, Millennium, etc.

So after a brief chat with Vic Garber about what landed me at fixed income, he asked me if I was interviewing anywhere. I told him I already received offers from Citibank's structured finance, JP Morgan's sales and trading (it was a rotational program across equities and fixed income), and Morgan Stanley. I was only considering between JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley really, because the interviewers from Citibank were kind of tough. I preferred Morgan Stanley because it was a firm that I had heard of ever since I was a kid in Hong Kong. JP Morgan was historically a corporate bank; investment banking and securities trading were not their forte. And I told Vic that I would have an interview at Goldman the week after. His face immediately turned solemn, as if I said something wrong. He was very sensitive about Goldman apparently. In a few minutes, he asked the HR and the Asian American interviewer to come in and said that my offer would be an exploding one, meaning that I would have to give them a reply by the next Monday before I had my interview at Goldman. I said I needed to consult my parents a bit before making such a big decision. They said that my parents were not bankers, so they probably had no knowledge about how the market worked. I gave in and promised to give a firm reply within three days.

If Edmond chose his career and firm based on a fortune stick, I told my parents to follow suit as well. It really sounded like those corporates hiring a Feng Shui master as an external consultant to make management changes. My parents said that the fortune stick for Morgan Stanley turned out to be the best lot, so they said I should try a summer there. They added that my bosses at Citibank would be very strict, reaffirming my impressions from the interview. So I agreed and signed back the offer letter.

I attended Goldman's interview anyways, because I couldn't just turn them down days before without a good reason. I got an offer from their fixed income desk and they had a black senior manager calling me to consider signing their offer. I told them I already signed with Morgan Stanley and thanked them for such kind offers. Honestly speaking, I didn't need the brand name Goldman on my resume. I never chose a firm based on the league table anyways. If Eric Tsang and Frances Wu both recommended me to try Morgan Stanley in New York, I had no reasons to say no to Vic Garber in the first place.

I wanted to thank my instructor Jaywon Lee for all the knowledge in accounting and finance so I took him to a Peking duck restaurant in Chinatown to express my gratitude and also to thank him for taking me out to a dinner at a Korean restaurant at Fort Lee in sophomore year. That Korean restaurant was a hall that was supposed to be a wedding ceremony venue. He was driving a rental Mini Cooper car too. He took me to a local baker in Fort Lee by the sea that served my favorite bubble tea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIb6AZdTr-A