happyvalue

This was written during my Finance102 - Financial Markets course. It was about 2 years ago but I still find it quite an interesting read. The language is poor because it was written under time constraint and some facts might not be fully representative of the situation. I agree that China is a one of the big superpower in today’s financial markets but definitely not be world’s biggest superpower. China is the largest creditor (as at Nov2010, China owns about a third of US debt) and with the ability to bail out European countries from debt crisis. With such a fund, China Vice-Premier has recently visited Europe and pledged to pump money into Spanish bonds in order to decrease reliance on U.S as an export market. The European Union has always been the biggest export market for China, hence China‘s investment in European debt came in as no surprise to most people. Also, considering that Europe constitute 27% to world’s GDP and US accounting about 23%, it is only natural t...

Yesterday, I went for an interview at a buy-side investment firm and was required to write an essay about the above topic. It was strange considering they weren't asking me more about the technical knowledge regarding finance. There were also a few other applicants applying to Economic Analyst and Quantitative Analyst roles. I saw their test paper, and it was scary. They were filled with plenty of theories and problem sums, and they seem to be solving long equations. On top of that, they both have a PhD from NTU. I guess the competition must be tough out there to work for a buy-side investment firm (albeit a poor cultured company). I've decided to recap what I wrote during the interview as a way to improve my writings. Here we go: Finding, interpreting and imagining The aim of an equity analyst is to understand the business, analyze the financial health of the business and form an opinion about the future of the company. It sounds simple but is easier said than done. It req...