Turn down job offer?

K

kgr025

I received an offer from a local financial advisory firm to start training to be a broker next month. It is a small fee/commission firm and contract with active managers so no active management is done in house.

I am a recent college graduate (attended college in Southern California) and now I am living at my parents rent/expense free in Northern California.

Over the last couple years I have traded on and off, nothing serious because of time dedicated to working (Scottrade stockbroker intern and Citi Smith Barney operations trade associate) and academics. While in college, I co-managed two couple hundred thousand real-money portfolio's (one for my college's endowment and the other for a CFA Society).

My situation that I would like advice on is whether or not I should take the broker position. They will license me (65,63,7) and that is great because in this job market, those licenses will help my marketability. Although I have experience at brokerage firms, I do not want to be a broker but in this job market I figure that I should give it a shot and save money so I can quit and trade. That is where the other issue comes in, if I am raising client assets, I shouldn't bail in a couple of months to trade right?

If I do not take it, I figure that since I live rent and everything else free, I could spend 100% of my time on learning to trade and develop the knowledge necessary to be successful.

Confused and in need of advise.
 
I was in a similar situation as you previously. Recent College Graduate in Finance. Looked endlessly for a job once I finished. Was eventually offered a broker position at a smaller firm after all that searching. At that point I could either do the following:

1) Take the safe approach and take the job; get safe stable money + continue to trade outside job hours.
2) Not take the job and just focus all my time on trading; live off my savings from previous jobs. At this point my trading wasn't very stable as I previously couldn't focus much time on it due to work + study commitments.

In the end I took the safe approach and worked the job for a little while but I found that most of my time was taken up with work and it did nothing to help my trading. When I came home I would be dead tired and could barely focus. Was working on average 10 hours a day and that doesn't include the commute times. The money was stable, could have made quite a bit from the commissions if I stayed there and got other qualifications in the industry but I found it wasn't worth it. Didn't particularly enjoy it, ended up quitting.

Sure the job market is f**ked to say the least for a Finance Graduate leaving College but I would say if you have other feasible options available go ahead and explore them. Set a time line to achieve your goals, if you stuff up you can always go back and get a Finance job. There are quite a few broker positions available in this market I've found cos they all want profit generation. Downside is that they churn you quite quickly if you under-perform as there is a high supply of workers so they can easily replace you.

Reminiscing I would say my choice was the right one. Only downside is that there are many hurdles in trading. I actually input more hours into trading than my previous job. There's lots of pain, lots of blood, lots of sweat and a heap of tears but overall quite enjoyable.
 
Why not continue with the job and invest your money with someone else?

The chances of you (or any new trader) outperforming one of the top funds are very slim.

Of course, deciding what makes a fund good is a job in its own right :)
 
Forget altogether about trading . You won't make it and anyway if anything traders are about to become an endangered species over the next 10 years.
 
Quote from kgr025:

I received an offer from a local financial advisory firm to start training to be a broker next month. It is a small fee/commission firm and contract with active managers so no active management is done in house.

I am a recent college graduate (attended college in Southern California) and now I am living at my parents rent/expense free in Northern California.

Over the last couple years I have traded on and off, nothing serious because of time dedicated to working (Scottrade stockbroker intern and Citi Smith Barney operations trade associate) and academics. While in college, I co-managed two couple hundred thousand real-money portfolio's (one for my college's endowment and the other for a CFA Society).

My situation that I would like advice on is whether or not I should take the broker position. They will license me (65,63,7) and that is great because in this job market, those licenses will help my marketability. Although I have experience at brokerage firms, I do not want to be a broker but in this job market I figure that I should give it a shot and save money so I can quit and trade. That is where the other issue comes in, if I am raising client assets, I shouldn't bail in a couple of months to trade right?

If I do not take it, I figure that since I live rent and everything else free, I could spend 100% of my time on learning to trade and develop the knowledge necessary to be successful.

Confused and in need of advise.
More...
GET THE JOB.
Don't trade you'll lose.

You'll learn to get clients (you'll learn sales), besides you get a client list, and licensing.
 
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