Last Day at Goldman Sachs

I finished my last day as GS on Friday. I was actually a sad day as I really enjoyed working with all the people there. The culture of the company is really great. It feels like a big family and is most definitely the best place I ever worked. It is the end of an era.

However, the role I had, I have pushed as far as I can go given the people in the department and being a contractor. So it is time to take the experience I have had and move on to something new.

I have been offered a job working on a fraud rules engine to detect anomalous trades as part of compliance for a South African bank and also have an opportunity to interview at the NYSE Euronext exchange.

These jobs are great in the sense they are providing me with great experience and also keeping me on track with the slow plan.

I’ll post here again when I have made my decision about which role to take.

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New Year’s Resolutions

It is New Year’s Day and a perfect time to reflect on the past and plan for the future.

The past

After 19 months of working for a top Investment bank (see my LinkedIn for details), I am leaving for the next step of the adventure. I have not been able to talk at all about what I have been doing as I had to sign a contract to which prohibits me from discussing anything, hence the lack of posts about much over the last year or so.

Blogs are actively monitored for keywords about what I am working on and the banks name etc.

However, I now have two weeks left and then I’m back on my own.

Over the last year, I have been working solidly on understanding how an Investment bank works. I have been working in compliance and reference data and have been able to stand at the centre of the Bank to see how it all fits together. I have had visibility (from a distance) into everything from trading to personal wealth management, regulatory and compliance to customer data security etc. I have done as many courses as humanly possible and learnt as much as I can from this role.

Financially, the last two years have been great. I have put all available cash into my deposit and stamp duty etc. to buy my family house although I do still owe my business a sizeable chunk and we are still slightly in the risk zone as we don’t have any cash buffer now. However, I feel it is a high hurdle that has been cleared.

I have been dabbling in trading here and there, mostly trying different strategies such as hedging, trying to get a market safe position or build in asymmetric risk. I have been looking for plunging opportunities and trying to build a world view. I have not made any money doing this.

Skills wise, I have hugely increased my technical skills which allow me to use these both in getting new jobs and in building a trading engine.

On the path to financial freedom, we have progressed along the slow path quite significantly. (The slow path being the sure way to be financially free with low risk and taking about 20 years, we have now completed 2 of them!)

I have been gathering information and skills to help me define and better plan for a medium and higher risk but shorter paths too.

Personally speaking, I have had another child, who is now 3 months old. He is healthy and gorgeous. My other boy is also doing very well and started Kindergarten at the Steiner school walking distance from our house.

Present

The present is taken up with finding a new role for February and learning more skills to prepare me for low latency real time front office trading work. I am currently reading a selection of programming books as well as this excellent book about the trading lifecycle.

Most of time is spent looking after children too. This is not to be under estimated when planning.

I am also planning and buying several different insurances to cover me and my family in the event is disasters. I see this as a key part of the financially free strategy.

The future

The future for this year looks very promising. Work seems to be abundant. Providing the global economy hangs together long enough for me to get a buffer together and I don’t find myself out of work for long periods, I should do very well.

The immediate future is finding the right contract to progress my learning about the frontline of trading. Ideally this will be in a hedge fund or proprietary trading desk in an Investment bank.

As well as getting into that, my resolution is to provide one revenue stream by the end of 2012. I would like to reduce the burden of only having one income stream. I see this most likely being some form of trading software tools I can provide on subscription to customers.

I will continue to pay down my debt to my company and then to build a buffer of cash. I don’t expect this year will allow me to have anything spare for investments. If I can build back a buffer of six months by the end of the year I will be very happy with that.

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Continuing along the path

Its been months since I last wrote here and having just read my last post I thought I would update my blog with what has been happening in my life along the road to being obscenely rich.

I have continued with meditation practice and yoga each morning. I have also joined the Self Realisation Fellowship (http://www.yogananda-srf.org/) and have been following the lessons given there.

I am still working at a top investment bank and have been working my way through the bank’s university courses which teach about all the different aspects of investment banking, the economy and trading.

So far I have completed courses on topics such as:

Technical Analysis
General Markets and Finance
Futures, Options and about exchanges
Macro Economics

All of these courses and my general level of exposure to banking systems has given me a good insight and experience into the way money works at the core of our capitalist society. I feel I am getting closer to the centre of the money. I am ever looking for opportunities to increase my earning potential, business ideas and knowledge of trading and trading systems.

I have been saving for a house and should have enough money to buy my first house (either my own or one to rent out) by August 2011.

This is quite an achievement given I was 14k in debt from the failed business one year ago.

I feel I am still on the path to being financially free as well as eternally happy. Its a slow process, this initial gain of capital. The months roll by and the invoices keep coming in. It is like a snowball, starting off small and growing.

My current estimates are 11 years to financial freedom. I believe with the knowledge I am gaining working for the bank this should drastically decrease over the next year or so. I am aiming to reduce it to about 3 – 5 years.

I have also been looking at starting up smaller businesses that are not million pound enterprises but supplement my income,  dont require time overhead and go to reduce the difference between outgoings and income.

Ill let you know more if any of them manifest into reality.

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