Medicine to Markets: A Medicine Student's Leap into Quant Finance: Decisions, luck, and finding meaning with Franklin Lou

Welcome to a new episode of the Worldonomics Podcast! Today, we explore an intriguing journey in our episode titled "Medicine to Markets: A Medicine Student's Leap into Quant Finance." Join us as we sit down with Franklin, a former medicine student who made a dramatic shift into the world of quantitative finance. We'll dive into the pivotal decisions that guided his career change, the role of luck in his unexpected transition, and the search for meaning in a field vastly different from his original path.

Transcript

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Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the world anomics podcast today. We're very lucky to be joined by a special guest, Franklin Lu to talk about his fascinating journey through being a medicine student to entering the world of global markets and quantitative trading, we're also joined by UQES very own treasurer, Ashen, uh, who was also very interested in having a chat with Franklin. So without further ado, uh, Franklin, would you like to start us off by just telling us a bit about yourself? Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Franklin. I'm a final year medical student at the University of Western Australia. Outside of medicine, I love all things investing and trading, in particular, thinking about how the world works and how sort of information about the world is translated into financial markets. Thanks. I'm really grateful for all the opportunities I've been provided in the last few years. I'm really excited to be joining a market making firm as a graduate trader next year. So hopefully in sharing my story, I can help, you know, some other people figure out what they want to do in life and and just encourage them to go for it. Yeah, absolutely. That's great. Um, so first of all, we just sort of like to get an idea of why you initially chose medicine as a career. Sure. So I didn't always want to be a doctor. I didn't like grow up wanting to be a doctor. I actually wanted to either be in physics or mathematics. In year 12, I sort of had to decide what career you wanted to do. And that's kind of a crazy decision to be making as a 17 year old. Um, at the time I was very interested in sort of the, the meaning of life questions. What would make my life meaningful? What does that even mean? Um, I believed then, and I still believe now that there's a lot of meaning to be derived from having responsibility, building relationships with other people, and I thought that being in medicine was. You know, there wasn't a job that had more responsibility. We're able to care for people in their darkest hour when, you know, when someone is sick, that is a huge burden on them and also on the people that are caring for them. Um, and in certain specialties, you can actually have the opportunity to build longterm meaningful relationships as well. So I chose medicine because I thought it was going to be challenging. I thought it was going to be meaningful. Um, and I would get to help people. So. Yeah, those were the reasons I initially chose medicine. Right. Yeah, so that's interesting. Um, sorry, go on, Dior. Oh yeah, I was just gonna say, so Um, when you got exposed to that side when you were doing so, uh, sort of like placements during med school did you see that was not the case and that you pivoted towards finance as a career or were you, was your mindset changed through, let's say undergrad and med school where that wasn't your goal in life anymore? Really great question. I did a medical sciences undergrad. with no second degree. So I just did basically medical science units and that was anatomy, physiology, um, that human biology, that kind of stuff. Yep. And just learning that content was so tedious and so boring to me. I think what I realized was I had never studied human biology and the bread and butter of medicine is understanding the human body. So when I got into rotations, I actually did find that sense of meaning, find that sense of responsibility. And I loved talking to patients, but it was kind of a balance. It was okay. I like the talking to patients and, um, building relationships aspect, but I don't like the bread and butter of medicine, which is. learning about, you know, human biology, anatomy, physiology, pathology, all these things. And that's pretty important because that's kind of like what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life. So, at the same time, around second year, third year, I was just starting to get into finance, just dipping my toes in. And that's a subject where I felt a lot more personally aligned in the sense of, I love to learn about this. I would get home after a long day of placement and I would just watch lectures. on portfolio management for fun. I would just watch, you know, like a lot of the Harvard MIT lectures are recorded online. You can just learn it all. And I loved that. And so it kind of shifted my mindset of, well, maybe there's a different part in this meaning equation, which is, do I love what I'm doing? Do I enjoy what I'm doing? Um, and that's when I started transitioning away from, um, I need to work in a career where I'm helping people and, uh, you know, doing something that is really meaningful, this kind of external meaning and focus on, okay, well, what do I feel like I enjoy? What do I, you know, what, what kind of problems do I want to solve and think about? And that's when I sort of pursued finance a bit further because I just really enjoyed it. Okay, um, in a sense your initial idea about what you thought would be a meaning in life sort of changed to Realizing what you would enjoy would be what you had meaning in. Yeah, I think it's definitely Two parts of the equation, right? I still agree that having responsibility building relationships and helping others is part of that meaning equation, but a lot of, a lot of jobs do that, right? And in fact, I would say if you're not providing value to the society, you're probably not going to be paid, right? Like you're being paid because you're providing value to someone, you're helping someone. So like in a lot of careers, you can have those things. And then. The second part, which I was missing in medicine was this personal alignment to what I was learning about. And what I was doing, did I actually enjoy it? And I think personally, that thing is like, more important, because you can find the rest of it in a lot of different careers, but you can't really find what You truly love in a lot of different places, right? Would you say you regret not taking a more like a finance related undergrad? Um, in, in regards to like you're doing medical science, you said, um, and then you said that you also learned all the finance, um, like portfolio management and all that, um, kind of concepts through online study through MIT lectures. So would you think that you would prefer to do a finance undergrad, or do you think that you would prefer to do a finance undergrad? Those online lectures were sufficient to get you familiar with the topics in, uh, in finance. Well, perhaps if I did a different degree, I wouldn't have had that intrinsic passion for what I was doing. Perhaps it was because it was outside of what I was studying that I was so motivated to do it because it was a passion project. It wasn't, you know, I didn't have to do tests on it. I didn't have to learn the content that was given to me. I could actually, you know, dig deep and. learn random topics that, you know, seemingly are not related, but were just interesting to me. So I think I don't regret it because maybe it was the fact that I chose medical sciences to learn that I didn't enjoy human biology. That led me to take the actions that I did to join the student management investment club to do competitions. And that is what actually led me to develop my passion. Maybe if I did a finance degree outright, I wouldn't have had that passion. Well, maybe, I'm not sure, but I would say that I don't regret it. Um, and I tried to live my life thinking about future regret. So I'm sure that we can touch on that a different, uh, we can touch on that a bit further as well. I think my follow up question to that is like, so I guess what you're saying is that it was mostly a self motivated passion to pursue finance. And I guess you'll correct me if I'm wrong. Your first, like Practical experience in finance was with the student managed investment fund in Western Australia, the University of Western Australia. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. And I, from my understanding, it's quite a big student investment fund, uh, down there in Western Australia. Can you, could you talk us a little bit about your experience there, how you got involved in like as a med students, whether you felt a bit out of breath, considering the fact that, you know, maybe the other people on, uh, who are equity analysts there maybe had a little bit more experience, had a little bit more knowledge or connections in that field. Oh man. Yeah, I can talk to that. That was crazy. So I actually started from this journey of personal finance and I w I've really loved this, uh, kind of Naval Rubber Comp philosophy on, okay, let's make everyone rich first and then ask them what they want to do with their life. So it's kind of like, you're going to really know what you want to do when, you know, quote unquote, you have infinite money. When money's not a problem, you can just do whatever you want. Right. So I was thinking, okay, well, if I want to be constantly doing what I want, not for the sake of money, then I need to focus on financial independence and freedom and et cetera. Right. So I went down as a personal finance journey, went down the investment journey. And then I remember it was so serendipitous. It was just one time in the library, I was talking to my friend about a sock. I was just pitching them a random stock. And then. Yeah. a current Smith analyst overheard me and said, Hey man, like I'm from Smith. I think you'd really enjoy this club if you, if you, um, joined and applications are open right now. At that time, I was like, Holy crap. There's no way I'm going to get through these interviews. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Like even, even when I'm passionate about this and I've done my own research, I'm sure that they've. Made their own models. They've done whatever analysis that I have no idea about. Right. So I didn't really want to apply. He really encouraged me and he really pushed me to apply. So I ended up applying, uh, did the interviews and got through it. So I was really, really surprised. I was really, really happy. The first day that I come in with the other, I guess, interns, the other new recruits, the guy next to me was the new recruits. Like the ex president of 180 and he was fixing one of the models of the existing analysts. So there was this guy who was supposedly in the same recruitment drive as me. He's on Excel. I had never opened Excel. He was just like grinding out this model and being like, yeah, like you added this line wrong and you know, this lines, you know, in the wrong place and stuff like that. And I was like, holy crap, I am screwed. There's like, how on earth am I going to be able to. You know, meet the expectations that I have on me if this guy is the person sitting next to me. Um, so yeah, it was a really I guess culture shock in a way, even though I was out of my depth at the start, they hired me because I was passionate about it. They hired me because they saw that I could learn. So I took every opportunity to learn. We have a really good education program where they put us through the modeling. Uh, we do wall street prep. Um, they put us through basically like lectures and yeah, I loved it. I, I learned it. Um, and I eventually. Caught up I guess. I'm so sorry, just a question. This was during your Undergrad or your medicine degree once you'd already started your postgrad. So this was at the end of my second year so I I Joined at the end of my second year into my third year Um, and the training program is held over the summer holidays. So it's a 10 week program. So when I first joined, I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I just know that I like investing in stocks. And then over 10 weeks, they sort of teach you everything, which is why they're looking for people who are hungry to learn rather than they're already know it all right. Because first of all, you can never know it all. And secondly, it doesn't matter because they're going to teach you everything anyway. So, so yeah, they ended up, it ended up being a very positive experience for me, even though I was out of my depth at the beginning. Um, I guess, um, sorry, you can go on our garden. Yep. So follow up question. This kind of, I guess we're talking about your story at the moment. This kind of deviates from that. And I guess we can touch back on your story afterwards. Um, so you said that the way that you got introduced to Smith was. You know, by chance, uh, one of the Smith analysts overheard you speaking. And I guess since then you've gone through many rigorous application rounds for various firms, how much, like, I guess this is speaks to like, you know, penultimate and pre penultimate students that might be going through similar application processes. How much do you think luck and like, you know, chance really plays a part in, you know, getting involved in those kinds of experiences, or is it. Like would you say that was all up to you? Um, it's not, it's not a question so much about your story, but so much about your philosophy when it comes to like applying for these places that, you know, tend to be quite rigorous and quite selective. I would say there's a huge component of luck. As in life, there's a huge component of luck. Um, and there's, I always like to break it down into things I can control and things I can't control. So let's say I'm going for an interview. I can prep as hard as I can and, you know, do all the right things. And you know what? I might only have a 75 percent chance of getting the job and that other 25 percent could be complete randomness. I can't actually control that. So I don't actually worry about that. I go into the interview knowing that. You know, I'm as prepared as I'll ever be. And I have about 75 percent chance. What ends up working is that, okay, instead of just doing one interview, let's do four different interviews at four different firms and flip this, you know, biased coin four times. Hopefully one of them is going to hit, right. And yeah, I think about this a lot because luck has played a huge role in my life, but you can do a lot of things to attract luck and to control variance, right? All your preparation controls the variance. It, you know, if you're the most prepared you'll ever be, maybe it's a 75 percent chance. You can't control all the 25 percent chance. If you didn't prepare, maybe it was only a 25 percent chance of getting it right. So you work, work, work, work, work, work. increase that probability to, you know, 60, 75%, and then you just flip a coin and you hope it lands. If it doesn't, it's randomness, right? Although that being said, you still have to be very self, um, self aware and realizing that, okay, a lot of time it's not randomness. A lot of time it's, you actually need to think about why you failed that interview and how you need, how you can get better. And so in a way, the probabilities improve as you do more interviews, right? Because. You learn from your mistakes. So, so yeah, sorry. I'm not sure if I really answered the question. I think you answered it perfectly. So with this philosophy, I'm sort of curious, does this also help you sort of deal with rejection in a more, sort of, uh, a greater frame of mind? Absolutely. I think you have to have a really, um, good balance of being realistic. So if you actually bombed an interview, you should figure out why. So balancing being realistic and also understanding the noisiness of interviews, the, the randomness, right? If you can truly say there is nothing I could have done to prepare more for this interview, then you can be at peace, right? You know that there's nothing else you could have done. Um, so that comes back to regret minimization. I really like to think about how do I act now to minimize the risk of And that might mean when I'm going through an interview phase, I go all in. I prepare as much as I can because I don't want the feeling of afterwards. If I fail the interview, I don't want the feeling of thinking, wow, I could, I could have studied more. I could have tried harder. Um, I could have put in more work. I don't want that feeling, right? I because. Regret is a, is a terrible feeling to, it's a terrible burden to put on yourself. Um, so I always act with a frame of mind of how do I act now to prevent future regret, or minimize future regret. Yeah. Um, so would you say that, um, that, you know, for, for medicine, I'm assuming that you would have had to go through a rigorous, uh, interviewing process as well. Uh, would you say the experience that you got from, uh, going through that, um, interview process early on in your degree prepared you for later on interviews in finance? Do you think some of the skills that you may have, uh, you may have got during the times where you were preparing for medicine interviews and. and interviewing probably more than just Western Australia and other universities as well. Do you think some of those skills were transferable to, um, the interviews that you had with, uh, let's say your city intern at, um, for global markets? Um, or would you say those are transferable? I think there are a lot of skills that are transferable. So things like being a good communicator, being clear and concise, um, things, things like that. But I do think that you need to re prepare like interview skills. go away really quickly. You actually have to sit down, like think of questions that you're going to be asked, write out your answers, change your answer, kind of memorize it, but not really. You want to be very comfortable with what your answer would be. Right. Um, so I think there are skills that cost over another skill that I think is self reflection. So in medicine, you will be asked like, Oh, why do you want to do medicine versus, uh, being a nurse or just blanketly why medicine? And that requires a lot of self reflection, which I think is also important in all these other interviews. So just adding onto that, if I didn't do extra interview prep, I don't think I would have passed the interviews. I had to redo my preparation because, um, first of all, the medical interview was a long time ago. And secondly, it's, uh, there are, there are a lot of differences still. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm also just curious. So that, um, Since you've, I'm aware that you've already decided that you're accepting a grad offer at SIG at the end of your medicine degree. So I'm curious, was that a tough decision to make to not actually pursue a full time career in medicine after you graduate? Yeah, that's definitely a hard decision. Like all the philosophy that I've kind of talked about, I didn't come up with that overnight, right? Like I've probably been thinking about it for four, four years or more. So ever since that, I really discovered that I might not be happy. With the bread and butter of medicine, which is anatomy, physiology, pathology, et cetera, I had to think, okay, well, what do I enjoy? What, what do I want to do with my life? And so in particular, this realization of, well, maybe meaning can also be derived from doing something that you love. That is a recent discovery. That's like only a year old. So, um, it's, it was difficult, but it was not a split second decision. It wasn't like they put the paper in front of me and I decide, yeah, sure. I'll be a great trader. No, it was like over the last four years, I've been thinking about this decision and it's pushed me in a certain direction. And when I get to that final note of signing the paper, I've already made the decision, you know, half a year ago. Yeah. Um, follow up question on that. So you said it took you around four years to fully come up with this philosophy to, um, of like, what, what's the meaning of life and what you truly find, um, passionate about and, and fulfillment in life for. from. I'm sure that you also like reached out to others and, and um, looked through meaning through talking to others, right? Um, and get their sort of philosophy. Do you think to an extent that no matter how much advice you were given, you still need to go through the process and come up with that philosophy yourself? Um, because at the end of the day, every person is unique and you'd say that, um, so what I'm basically saying is like all this advice or all this, uh, all your experiences and what made you develop this philosophy? Was it mostly through your own discovery or did you take a lot from others as well? I think I took a lot from others. But I get what you mean. So, so I think that, you know, wisdom and experience and whatever, and I'm not saying that I understand the meaning of life. I think, uh, you know, three years from now, I might look back and think, oh, wow, he didn't know anything. Right. And that's good. That means I'm learning. That means I'm developing my philosophy. Um, what was I saying? No, just in regards to the philosophy and how you, uh, um, reaching out to others. And, uh, it was, uh, yes. I think that wisdom and experience can be learned, but it can't be taught, right? Like someone can't sit me down and say, yeah, these are the lessons I learned in life. And I immediately go, Oh, I understand. I have now lived your life. Not really, right? Like I can listen to it, understand it and take some lessons from it, but I'm never going to really, really know it for myself until I get to that point in my life. And I think that's the same with, with everything. There's a book called. Siddhartha, which is about a boy's journey. Um, and I won't spoil it, but in the book, he meets a lot of spiritual leaders, or he has the potential to follow spiritual leaders. In fact, he has the potential to follow the Buddha. And he says, everything the Buddha knows probably came from a source inside of myself, inside of everyone. And so why should I follow this teacher when the teacher is not going to teach me that stuff? I have to learn it from myself. I have to, I have to You know, come up with it from looking inside myself. And so I really think that's true. I take a lot of advice from other people, but I combine bits and pieces and then I combine it with my own experience and what I want. to develop my own philosophy. I take the best parts of what other people think. And then I figure out how does this apply to my life and what I want to accept, what I want to reject. And then I adapt my philosophy. So there are times when I've asked, you know, the head of my desk, whether I should actually go into this job or continue medicine. And they said, I think you should continue medicine. Right? That's a pretty big recommendation for someone who You're essentially when you go into a job as an analyst, you're hoping to become the MD, right? You're hoping to become the head of desk. You're hoping to become them. And for them to say, actually, I think you should pursue medicine. You know, you have to, you know, think about that advice, where it's coming from, why they tell you that. And then you can choose to accept or reject it. Or you can accept parts of it, reject other parts of it. Because I then go to my consultants on the ward and they say, I think you should, if you're not really passionate about medicine, you should pursue finance and something that you actually enjoy. Great. The grass is always greener on the other side, right? Like everyone is telling me to do what they didn't do. So at that point, the decision is very clear. You have to figure out what you want and go your own path. But other times it might be not so obvious. Thank you. Right. Yeah, so in a sense that their, uh, their advice given to you would sort of be formed majorly by their own , uh, their own perspective, really. So it's not something objective that could be applied to your life all of a sudden. Yeah, exactly. Everyone's. biased towards their own experience and everyone has struggled in their life. There's no person who's gone through a career to get to the level of an MD or a consultant who doesn't look back and say, that was really, really hard. If someone didn't love what I was doing, they would struggle. Right. And so of course they would recommend someone not to do that. If they, if I say, I don't like medicine, right. It makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Just, um, just another question, um, in regards to, uh, In regards to your medicine, like a med school. Uh, so you said that you, so what I'm basically saying is, um, during your med, med, uh, med degree, right. You had opportunities. Did you have opportunities to just quit medicine altogether and go into finance? Um, for example, uh, when you interned at a city for global markets, was there, was there ever a, a opportunity there to just, uh, quit medicine early and then go into finance completely? Right now where you could have not done your final final year and just gone straight into becoming a trader What were those opportunities presented to you? And if not, if they were what would have your decision been if it was to be if it was to continue medicine? Why yes, okay. So those Opportunities did present themselves So I remember at the end of my time at City, um, they sat me down and said, you know, do you want to, um, do you want to work here or do you want to finish your medical, medical degree? And at the time I decided to finish my medical degree. There were times that there's reasons why I did that. So firstly, these are all decisions that are kind of on the margin. These are not necessarily right or wrong. Um, the reason I decided to do medicine at that time was because after my city internship, I was actually very burnt out from finance. I had done the whole internship online because WA was locked down, whereas my other, the rest of my cohort had been in person. So I was the only one online and I was working. like altered hours, right? I was like two or three hours earlier and that was very taxing on me. I was pretty bent out. And so I said, I wanted to complete medicine because at that time I just finished my undergrad. But I had never done any prac, right? And remember when I talk about why I chose medicine, it was all about that practical side. It was all about building relationships with patients, talking to patients, that kind of thing. So I had actually never experienced that. So I wasn't ready to say, I don't want to be a doctor because I really hadn't had an experience being a doctor yet. Now, when I started in post grad, I could have kept looking for opportunities to leave. In fact, in one of my, um, interviews for a comp firm, they asked me like, you've got two years left of your medical degree, why don't you just leave? And my response was that I wanted the degree as a safety net because it was kind of like an option down the line in case I ever wanted to return to medicine. And I thought that two more years is not that big of a price to pay for the security that I'm getting. I think that the interviewer didn't like that answer. I personally believe that answer. I think that there's some probability, whether that's five, 10%, that 20 years down the line, I'm sick of trading. I'm sick of finance. And I just want to sit down as a GP and chat to patients. I have no idea what that probability is. I think it's non zero, and so I'm happy paying the two years of my life to get that security. That being said, the two years of my life is not a waste, right? I do a ton of extracurriculars, I spend a lot of time with my friends, and that's a lot easier in uni than it is in full time work. So, my decision to continue, uh, studying was really as a safety net for my future. Okay, um, as a counter to that, for example, if someone said, um, if you, if you have a safety net, then you're not going to commit fully to finance and you should leave because, um, then you would have to commit to finance. You'd have to give you a hundred percent in finance because you have nothing to fall back on, no safety net. Um, what would you say to someone who says that, and that you should quit medicine because, um, without that safety net, then you would, Um, then you would have to go 100 percent into finance because there is no safety net to fall back on. I think that's a reasonable thought. That's kind of like, why have a plan B if I go all in on plan A? I actually think that the opposite is true for me. By having a safety net and by knowing that if I fail horrendously, I can still be a doctor, that gives me the confidence to go out and take risks. That gives me the confidence to move to Sydney and, and, you know, start a new career because what the worst that's going to happen is I'm going to have to be a doctor, right? That's not a bad case scenario. Like maybe for myself, my personal alignment might be, Oh, but I don't really enjoy medicine or whatever. Right. I'm not going to be screwed. I'm not going to be homeless. Right. I can always have, I help have that safety net. And so it was, I think because of the safety net, it gives me the confidence to go out and take risks. And I think that's the same with. You know, investments, if you don't have an emergency fund, how are you ever going to take risk with your money because you have the chance of going bankrupt and homeless, right? You have to have a safety net. That's my opinion though. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. As you said earlier, sorry, go on Ash. I was just adding on to that. I think you said earlier that you were sort of able to, um, experiment more in finance as well because it was more of an interest to you in the start compared to being like a full time sort of something you were committing to. Is that right? Like when you started learning about personal finance. Yeah. Exactly. So I never really like even with the Citi internship. I didn't intentionally apply for that. I, I just did the city global market challenge and I really enjoyed it. And through that, they gave me an opportunity to interview. I didn't want to interview at all. Right. I never considered it as a career. I just enjoyed it. So, you know, there's a lot of serendipity that comes in. There's a lot of luck that happens. Maybe if I never did well in the challenge, I wouldn't have the opportunity to in turn as a city. And then maybe I never would have developed, developed my passion further. Right. Who knows? I don't know what these alternate realities could have been. Sure. Um, so I have a follow up question. So one that's relevant to Citi and one that's a bit more generic. So the first one is just out of personal curiosity, when you were interning at Citi, what rotations did you go through and which ones were your, which ones were you more inclined to, like, had more interested in, which ones did you like shy away from? And the second question is, you mentioned earlier that the past two years hasn't been a waste of time. Considering the fact that you still do a lot of extracurriculars. And I know you do, um, I know you're a very passionate poker player and such. So how do you manage that time? You know, being a full time med student, um, you know, committing to an internship at SIG and also balancing out these, um, like external relationships with your family, friends, and those extracurriculars as well. Okay, so I'll start with the first question, which is where, what did I do at Citi? So I did, um, so at first I thought that I would want to do sales because of relationship building, talking to clients, et cetera. Right. And that's kind of what I said. But then at Citi, you actually get to choose your rotations. So I chose to do, I ended up choosing rates trading and, active ETFs trading. So I don't actually think I chose active ETFs, they just gave that to me, but I chose rates trading as my number one preference. The reason I did that was because for the city city global market challenge, I was in charge of creating the bond part of the portfolio. And I had no idea about bonds. I had to learn everything from scratch, but I really enjoyed it. I really liked how macro focused it was, how, how much it was based on like. You know, big picture stuff, inflation, uh, politics, uh, geopolitical conflict, FX, that sort of stuff, right? I, I, I really enjoyed that. So that's why I chose that. It was very difficult doing these rotations online. Um, I think at the time half of my desk was on holiday as well. So I didn't really have a great desk time, like, uh, face to face with my MD and whatever. I think at the end of my final presentation, the head of the rates training, this was like, Oh, what rotations did you do? And I was like, mate, I was, I was on your desk, bro. But you know, That's whatever, that was kind of funny. I enjoyed the learning aspect. A lot of the people at Citi were very open to just teaching you whenever you had a question. My mentors were great. Um, but, I ended up not doing that much I ended up not doing that much work that was relative, relevant to my particular desk. What ended up happening was I just learned a lot about bonds in general. I spent a lot of time on Investopedia, YouTube, etc, learning about the stuff, rather than having the on desk experience. Um, and that was partly due to, you know, half my desk being off and also me doing it online. So, you know, there was that, that wasn't that enjoyable. In my second rotation, So after my first rotation, I actually got the feedback that I wasn't interacting with my team enough. So my second rotation, I was very intentional about the time I spent on my team. And I would say, would talk to my team constantly, and they would give me projects that were much more in line with what they were doing. So things like creating a, a handover sheet for all the active ETFs that we trade. So let's say a new grad was going to come onto this desk. What document would you give them to teach them everything about, um, you know, what we're trading or like the specific parameters of what we need to do. So that was fun. That was sort of being more involved in the desk. So those would be my highlights when I was more involved with the desk and the things that I did enjoy would be all that downtime when I felt like I was flustered and I felt like I you know It was just alone in wa and whatever and that was kind of my own fault because I wasn't reaching out to people So that was kind of a rambly response No, I understand. Anything you'd like me to elaborate on? Oh no, I was just going to say on the second part of the question was regarding like extracurriculars and balancing, um, time management. Yes. So I'll preface this by saying I'm not very good at time management. I procrastinate a lot and I cram a lot, but there are certain things that have helped me, um, manage everything. So one of the biggest things is prioritizing. So I have a really good sense of. What is important in this moment? What is urgent at this time? And so all my tasks are broken into like a two by two matrix. That's importance versus urgency. So things that are very important and very urgent, you obviously do them, right? But things that are very important and not very urgent, I would procrastinate that and I would leave it to the last minute. So you have to be aware of that. And you have to make sure that even if you're going to like quote unquote procrastinate and leave it to the last minute, you have to give yourself enough time, right? Like maybe it's an exam. You have to give yourself two weeks for myself. By the time two weeks, he said, my stress response, my cortisol goes through the roof. And then I'm like, I just worked so, so, so hard. Like humans, we can move mountains when we have an idea of necessity. If we think we have to do this. We can do anything. All right. So part of it is, you know, first just being aware of the different tasks that fit into that two by two matrix. And part of it is creating necessity for yourself saying, I have to do this. Otherwise, you know, I'm going to fail or I'm happy. I have to do this. Otherwise I'm not going to do it as well in that interview, et cetera. I think a big part of it is also learning about what you're procrastinating, right? Learning about, um, let's say I'm procrastinating studying med. Well, maybe it's because I don't actually enjoy med, right? Why is it that I can read endlessly about finance and I can do, I never feel like I procrastinate or, um, you know, get burnt out from studying finance. Well, maybe that's because I enjoy it, right? And I, I'm personally aligned to that. So that's another part of it, figuring out what you're personally aligned to. And then in the prioritization space, I would say you need to know what, where the value for your unit of time lies. So what I'm talking about is diminishing returns. Um, you can spend a lot of time on something and you know, by the nth hour, you have to spend more and more time on it just to get marginally better. If you want to be an expert on the field, you've got to do that. Right. But my. My goal is not to be an expert in medicine. It's actually to be an expert in, you know, other things. And so I'll wait studying for medicine a bit more, but I will still study enough. I'll study like 80, 20 to do 20 percent of the work to get 80 percent of the benefit. And I would study up until that point where I start to get, you know, diminishing returns. So I'm sort of like maximizing how much I'm learning for the time I'm spending. So I'm actually not spending that much time on it. So yeah. And then the next thing is I waste a lot of time, right? I scroll reels. I, you know, watch Tik Toks, watch YouTube, and I just waste a lot of time. So there are, there are protocols that I have in place. I try to optimize my downtime when I can't be doing anything else to distract myself. Like when I'm driving, right. I love to listen to podcasts and audio books when I'm driving. Okay. Um, when I used to be, when I used to take the train, I would like study on the train. When I'm in the hospital and I'm preparing for interviews, you know, maybe the, the team is inside seeing a patient and there's too many people in the room and I can't go inside. I'm not going to twiddle my thumbs, right? I'm just going to go on my iPad. either read about medicine or do a interview question and study some maths, right? So I try to optimize this downtime to account for the fact that I waste a lot of other time. Now, in terms of managing my time for, you know, spending time with friends and family, that is still difficult for me. Um, like I, I'm in, I have a relationship and that takes a lot of my time. So I have to sort of like schedule out that time to spend with my partner. Um, and And imagine that that time no longer exists, right? Because you want to be present with your partner. You don't want to like double book sort of thing. So, you know, that would be my advice that I have for time management. I'm not very good at managing my time. I think my schedule is pretty hectic all the time. It's pretty, um, sporadic and that's kind of reflective of how my mind works. It mind works. It is quite sporadic and disorganized. Yeah. Well, also, do you think that the downtime you have in sort of, uh, seeing your friends and family sort of helps you concentrate more when you're actually locked in to do a particular task later on? And then also, do you think this makes you more dynamic in the sense of you saying that you can, like, whenever you have a short amount of time between seeing, um, patients or at the hospital, you're able to do more just because you're more focused? Yeah. So the first thing is. I absolutely think that you need to spend time with friends and family. Back to the regret minimization, um, I think that realistically, when you start work, you're going to see your friends in particular a lot less, um, because you don't have that excuse of sort of like just meeting up at uni or whatever. Um, you have to actually actively meet up with each other. And that's what I'm finding now. We have to actively Uh, put in the effort to schedule a time to meet up, to play board games, to do this thing, to go out, to go hiking, whatever we need to plan it out, right? And, and our schedules don't always align. So, let's say I'm moving to Sydney next year, how many more times, how many more times am I going to see that friend group, right? It might be 20 times, it might be 50 times in my lifetime. You know, there's a, there's a tick on this. And this is the same with seeing your parents. You know, there's a finite amount of times and you're not going to know the last time you hang out with that friend group, um, or see a family member. Right. So that, you know, that counts always ticking. So I feel very grateful when I get those, that experience, right. When I get to meet up with my friends and I say, I say to my friends, wow, like I'm really glad we did this. Um, Because I don't know how many more times we'll be able to do this in the future, but I'm really happy that we did this today. And a lot of my friends are, you know, on the same boat, you know, we just, we acknowledge that time is limited. Um, so I think that's a good perspective. Now, what was the second part of the question? Oh, so yeah. So my question sort of was just, does it allow you to be more dynamic by also sort of allowing yourself to, you know, um, hang out with friends and family? Does that allow you to be more dynamic in the sense of you're able to do more stuff when you are actually focused? I think focus is a big part of it and purpose is a good part, big part of it. Like for example, one of the biggest procrastinators for me is when I don't have a purpose when I feel like, you know, I can just be doing anything. Right. But then if I can't, I can, if I quote unquote can just be doing anything, then my monkey brain goes, all right, do the thing that requires the least effort. Like just go on YouTube and like watch random videos. Right. If I'm in the hospital, I can't do that. Right. Right? Like if the patient, if the team is about to come out, I really only have time to do like a three minute question. So that gives me purpose, right? Now that next three minutes has a label on it. It's like the next three minutes is for doing this question. And so my mindset is, okay, I'm going to do this question. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So in a way it's focused in a way it's like attaching purpose to certain tasks or certain amounts of time. Yeah. Yeah. Just in regards to your time at City, I know you kind of already addressed this with your answer to Ashton's question, but just being the odd one out and having like little prior experience in finance, how many hours would you say you spent learning new concepts in finance? Like how you said you had to learn bonds from scratch? Um, and would you say that your studying techniques from your medical degree has like transferred and helped you in that regards? So, are you talking about before the internship or during the internship? During, during the internship. During the internship, I think I spent a lot of time studying because I didn't know what else I was meant to do and I didn't have the confidence to reach out to ask for something to do. So that's on me. But I would study for, I would learn things for, you know, maybe half the work day, I'd say. Yeah. And that would involve just watching commentary on markets, reading Investopedia, reading, um, primers, et cetera, that kind of stuff. And did my medical background help me? Like in a way, yes. Like I have good study techniques. Um, but I think in this sense, it was a lot more unstructured, right? I was just kind of learning whatever I was interested in and going down rabbit holes and things like that. So in a way it was. You know, related and others not really. Okay. Um, would you say that you procrastinate a lot of studying because you don't enjoy Um, the content that you're learning, whereas when it's, uh, when it comes down to finance and studying, um, new concepts in like, uh, portfolio management or, um, quantitative analysis, would you say, because you were more interested in that, uh, topic in that field that you procrastinate a lot less than when you're, um, studying, for example, anatomy or microbiology? Yes. Uh, yes. I don't know if I can elaborate on that, but I do think I procrastinate less when I am learning about like finance and, um, things I actually enjoy. Okay. Yep. Yep. So just, uh, one question, this would maybe help someone who's struggling through like a similar journey of sort of deciding what sort of career they want to pursue. So from your perspective as someone who pursued a career that was very different from their chosen field of study initially, uh, how relevant do you think a person's choice of degree is to their actual output in the real world? So I think for certain jobs, very relevant. Like medicine, engineering, uh, nursing, vet, dentist, like your degree is basically what you're going to do, right? And it has to be some sort of standardized training program for their output in the real world to be of a certain standard. So I think, you know, in certain careers, it is very relevant. In other careers, not so much. I think for finance, If you consider what skill set do you actually need to have, like, and how you gain that skill set, a lot of the skills that you need, you're not even going to be taught in your finance degree, right? You're going to be taught on the job. So really, what kind of knowledge should you have? You know, I think that's very much a, um, I think this is in particular for finance. I think people. In the industry, whether that's quant finance or sales and trading or banking or whatever, you can afford to not have a background in finance because people believe that it's easy to teach someone as long as they're smart enough and willing to learn, but that's very different to the other careers I mentioned, right? You, you kind of have to study medicine if you want to be a doctor. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so sorry, Ashton, would you sort of agree with that analysis? I'm just curious about your perspective on it. Um, yeah, I think from my experience, most of most of most of my work experience, everything I've learned, I probably learned on the job as opposed to, um, at university. Um, and I think the biggest thing about like the courses you do is like, it's a testament to your effort and your ability to learn something. I'm not so much what you learn. It's about the ability to learn. Would you agree with that? Absolutely, man. Like, and this is why, um, this is another skill that I was really, really focused on when I was in my first year, second year, third year, because I knew that it was going to set me up for life. It was this idea of how do I learn well? How do I ask the right questions? How do I ask good questions? How do I, you know, study effectively? And when I say study, I don't mean study con like uni content, right? I just mean learning. How do I learn effectively? hit the nail on its head. No one cares about what you know, because you can always learn it. And someone who knows a lot versus someone who knows very little, but learns faster. Well, guess what? The person who learns faster is very, very quickly going to overtake the person who knows a lot. I found this personally, right? When, you know, in, in Smith, you've got people who are, Equity analysts who do finance degrees who know a lot quote unquote know a lot of stuff, right? But guess what if I can learn faster than them I can catch up to them and then i'll exceed them right, it's kind of like if you imagine a graph and two curves that One is growing faster than the other even if it starts higher The person who's growing fast is just really quickly going to overtake it. I think a question that I want to ask on that is like, so when you're working for these like global, you know, corporations, institutions, one thing that surprised me was the sheer amount of knowledge and the information that you're exposed to. And in my experience, it was quite overwhelming and it was hard to like learn everything, um, then and there considering the fact that, you know, like in comparison at university, um, if you're doing an assignment, you have a set curriculum, you have a set lecture, like 10 lectures to go over. Whereas like, if you're in like, especially in a Korean markets, you can read the AFR or the Bloomberg markets how many times you want, but when you're working in these institutions, you're exposed to a lot more, um, information that the average person doesn't have access to. How did you go about, you know, condensing that I know it's like, it's I guess that's kind of the bread and butter of markets. Right. Uh, making sense of what's like daily developments. And there's, you're exposed to a lot of information, especially at Citi and SIG, I'm assuming. How did you go about, you know, condensing it and then learning off from that? Okay. That's a really good question. Um, so I think there's kind of like two aspects of this question. So first is like, When we're talking about markets in particular, there's a lot of information that's contradicting, right? Like, you know, one, uh, one factor that pushes rates higher versus another factor that pushes rates lower. And how do you sort of juggle that? And then the next. Okay. For myself, there's a lot of stuff to learn, right? So you're kind of, um, drinking from the hydrant and in terms of information, you can learn so that I think those two are kind of separate questions. So the first question on markets, I would say, man, that's like what you said, right? That's like your job, right? It's like really, really hard to distinguish the noise from the signal. I would say you really need to understand the noise. And this is something that I, this is the reason I love markets, which is I want to learn about how the world works, how different drivers actually change different market forces. Like what are the causal relationships, not just whether I can explain some change, but whether I can predict some change. That's what I'm really interested in. And so the way to separate the noise from the signal, I think is to understand. what's actually the driver and then saying, okay, if I'm right, X should happen. And then you see in real time where the X happens. And if Y happens, then you think, okay, well maybe I was wrong here. Maybe I was wrong there, but this is the whole, Fun. This is the whole challenge of markets, right? Markets are complex dynamic systems that constantly change. It's like, you're trying to predict how biased the coin is when the probability of the coin keeps changing, right? It's very, very hard. Um, so I don't have a great answer for it, but I would say like, focus on what you think are the fundamental causal relationships between things. That's how you're going to separate the noise from the signal. Oh, another thing is. My personal philosophy is that things in the world don't change that quickly, that rapidly. Um, there are certain times where, you know, there's a rapid change like COVID or whatever, but in general, macro themes don't change that often. Maybe it's like six months plus. But it's not going to change day to day. Whereas when you're in the industry, it feels like it changes day to day. It feels like, Holy crap, like this new information just came out. How do I, you know, change my probabilities and think about it in a different way, just step back, look at the bigger picture, because if you're in markets, you're looking at bigger picture and think, what do I think is the fundamental thing that's happening? And each new data point just impacts what I already think just a little bit more. Right. It pushes it in a certain direction or another direction. I always think of it as if you're going in a straight line, all you need is a slightly, slightly, uh, push in one direction for you to be in a completely different, uh, direction, you know, three kilometers down the line. And so this is like chaos theory, right? And this is why predicting the future is so difficult with small changes lead to really, really big changes down the line. And that's what happens in markets. So yeah, I would say it's very hard to predict, right? But focus on causal relationships. I think to touch on that, sorry to put you on the spot. Um, if this, uh, yeah, this is going to put you on the spot, but, um, you know, considering, uh, your experience at Citi all the information you have access to, and I'm sure you're still keeping up with markets. Uh, what would you say is your top three picks, um, across all asset classes for this year? Ha ha. Um, look for my personal portfolio in my entire journey in finance, all I've learned is that. I know enough to know when something is clearly a scam or something is clearly wrong, but I don't know enough to make predictions yet. I, I, I'm not good enough to make these kinds of calls. So I'll tell you what I'm doing in my own portfolio. Um, but I'm not going to give a prediction about Marcus. Cause I don't think that I don't have, I don't think I have any edge in that actually. Um, edge is you have to have very particular reasons why you have edge. And I don't think I have edge. I just, I just enjoy it. Right. Which is why I like thinking about it. And also on the thing you touched on, I'm actually not always in, um, in touch with markets because like I said, the macro themes, I think don't change daily. So I'm, you know, when I'm in the mindset of I need to finish my medical degree, I'm actually not really following markets unless there are huge developments. That being said, I would just recommend, oh man, I can't even pick, I would just say go with a diversified portfolio, bro. Like honestly, honestly, man. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. All right. So I'm going to go with, um, uh, diversified portfolio of gubbies, world gubbies, and Mate, S& P 500. It's a classic. And probably like, I've been thinking more about these long tail hedge funds and these commodity trade like CTAs. I still don't really know where they fit into a portfolio. Um, oh man, I'm quite big on the green space at the moment. I think that I've just invested a lot of money into a plastic recycling company. So I think I'll go with something that's in the green space. Those are probably terrible answers, but I really don't like to like outside of work, I guess. I don't really like to make big decisions on my own portfolio. Yeah. Oh, actually, no, I actually did make a big trade like a few days ago. Um, silver. Yeah, I'll go long silver and gold. Um, I think that there's probably going to be some, uh, rate curve steepening and, uh, more rate cuts priced in the front end of the curve, I think. Yeah. So I'm pretty bullish silver. I've just bought some silver coals and also a silver ETF. I don't know if you can like stitch those everything together and like edit it to make it sound like a coherent answer. But, uh, you know, you guys can have fun with that. Yeah. Um, just touching on your time at, uh, city store, you said you worked on bonds. Um, so that's a fixed income product. Did you have a choice between, um, picking between fixed income versus equities lines? Um, if so, why did you choose fixed income over the equities? Um, and was there ever an option to trade commodities? I don't know if Citi trades commodities in, um, in global markets in Australia. But, um, yeah, in regards to why bonds? So why fixed income versus equities? Uh, was there an option for picking like a commodities, um, commodities line? Um, if so, Uh, what, what was, what was your, um, reason reasoning behind choosing fixed income products over equities or commodities? I think that fixed income is much more purely macro, whereas equities, you have that, you know, like, um, idiosyncratic risk, right? You have firm risk, you have fundamentals of the company. So I quite enjoy macro, um, and thinking about, you know, developments. On a big scale. And so I thought that rates would be more, um, more, more purely aligned with that. Yeah. So, uh, when you said you don't like, um, you don't really want to do the equities line because of the, um, the associated like firm risk. Is that because it's like more qualitative analysis? Sorry, sorry. Wait. No, you, you, you, uh, just say your question again. Sorry for interrupting. Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry. But in regards to when you said, uh, you would rather, um, fixed income products because they vary more on a macroeconomic, uh, scale versus, um, like, for example, equities, which, uh, depend on firms and there's associated firm risk with that. Um, is that because a lot of firm risk is, um, is, is determined by qualitative analysis rather than quantitative or analytical? Um, is that a reason why you chose, chose like fixed income over equities? Is that you prefer more of that quantitative analysis versus that qualitative? I think that because equities have firm risk and systematic risk, right? It's, you've got macroeconomic and all the other stuff. There's naturally more randomness. There's more randomness in how they operate businesses and ultimately how they end up, right? And that's what I found at my time as an equity analyst as well. I love understanding businesses I think I have zero edge picking a business, right? Yeah, because I just think that there's so much randomness it goes back to that analogy of small decisions create large effects They could be doing a bunch of like bad decisions that I have no idea about and all I can see is their financial reports. And I think, yeah, these guys are doing hell well, right? So there's that part of it, which is that I think there's more randomness. And I, I also like the fixed income because it's more purely macro. Um, obviously there are like individual risks because the differences between bonds. And if you have, you know, a bond that's related to a security that, sorry, a bond that's related to a company, then, you know, then you have to analyze the firm risk as well and such. Right. But I'm just saying like in general, um, I think there's less randomness because Fixed income is more purely macro. So you say you prefer the safer, um, safer investment, um, strategies rather than the riskier that, that entail like, um, going, like going to equities. Um, So w would you say that's the case? Um, so in my personal portfolio, you'll find a bunch of random crap . Yeah. Right. So you'll find like Ethereum and you'll find, uh, OTC, Canadian stock and, uh, you know, you know, like. microcap mining stocks, a bunch of shit basically. Um, but that's because I enjoy the process of investing. I enjoy trying to understand it. I think I have zero edge, right? I'm not going to delude myself and say that, you know, I can pick stocks because I don't think I can, but because I enjoy it, I like putting these positions on. So personally, it's not that I, you know, I'm more risk on risk off or like, I prefer things that are lower investment risk, et cetera, because. You know, in my personal portfolio, it's huge risk. It's just that I think that there's probably a bit more, the work that you do into understanding what's going to happen in the world is probably going to pay off a bit more in fixed income. It's marginal though. Like I wouldn't mind being an equity analyst at all. Um, that being said, you also like on your question with risk, you have to think what, what kind of risk are you talking about? Like, are you talking about losing money? Are you talking about losing all your money? because bonds are still risky, right? They just have a lower, um, expected return, right? So they have a kind of a similar return for the risk, but they're still risky, right? Um, maybe you can say that 10 year us treasuries are not risky, but they're risky in the sense that they could underperform, uh, a different asset, right? Cause you're in your portfolio. You're always trying to find what is going to, right? Be the best return for your amount of risk at every point in time Yeah, so, you know, even if if us treasuries do not move that much they might not be risky on an absolute return basis, but they could be risky because You know if the nasdaq runs a hundred percent, then you basically just got fucked right? Yeah, of course. Um Sorry, you go ashen Um, yeah, I just have a follow up question about how you mentioned that you don't have edge and that's especially true for equity so I want to try counter that and say like I understand that you're not a Like a expert in the in any field in health per se, but obviously you do have an edge when it comes to you know Health, uh compared to the average trader or the average, you know, everyday trader So wouldn't you say when it comes to equity stocks, you know when these companies release say reports on new developments Whether it's Madonna, Cochlear or ResMed. Wouldn't you say you have a You Edge when it comes to, you know, like processing this information and determining whether it has potential. Like I know for example, like when, um, you know, in Europe, when they came out with GLP ones, a lot of Australian, uh, health companies that, you know, treat diabetic, uh, like people with obesity went down, but, you know, they came up with these reports saying that, you know, our products in conjunction with, you know, GLP ones actually, it, it, it performs like, you know, our patients actually see like even better reaction, uh, or like positive outcomes for them. Wouldn't you say that? Maybe not in all equities, but at least in health that you do have some kind of edge compared to the average trader. Yes, I agree with that. Um, and especially if you have more experience in that field. So like a GP would really know, we would really be able to see, um, the effects of a new drug or like at least could, you know, theorize what it might look like. Right. And you know, there's a lot of speculation with the longterm impact of these drugs On, you know, food companies and, you know, a lot of people are going into putting a lot of, um, effort into, you know, hiring experts into the field and getting their opinion and stuff. So I definitely think that you can have edge in certain departments, given your speciality. I don't think I have an edge in any particular, um, field, even as a medical student, like, do I have more knowledge than the traders who are trading these products and the analysts that are analyzing these stocks? Even though I'm a med student, like probably not. Maybe if I was more specialized, but I agree. Like people can have pockets of edge that they should leverage. That's like a very, um, kind of like Peter Lynch kind of perspective where it's like, focus on where you, your circle of competence, um, and Warren Buffett, focus on where your circle of competence, um, the stocks with that lie within your circle of competence. So, yeah, I agree, man. And so, uh, just a sort of question on that. Do you think sort of, uh, a company is looking to, for example, hire someone, uh, would sort of, they also favor or would it be in the, would they be incentivized to favor someone who has an edge in a particular field or another field? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like when I was at, when I was at X firm, I won't say which one, but, um, they were, you know, they were looking at some stocks and they would say, Oh, Franklin might come over and. You know, have a look at this. Like, what do you think of this? What do you think the impact of this drug or you know that medical device and I'll say yeah Like that makes sense. This is how it works this is the mechanism of action of that drug and you know, this is how it might Might look like that's like a purely medical perspective right and that can inform a researcher But let's say a GP, right? They might have an edge in what they think a Zempik might do 10 years from now, but they have no edge in like valuation or, um, understanding business dynamics or anything like that. Right. So you really want the ideal candidate or the ideal analysts would be like someone with really strong research skills plus a specialty. And, and we are seeing a lot of that where people, you know, um, buy side firms like hedge funds and, and, um, you know, like long equity funds, they do value. If you're a doctor and you love research, like equity research, come join us. And you're going to special, but you're going to be specialized in analyzing medical stocks, right? That is a huge edge. Yes. I agree. Yeah. Thanks. So, so, so yeah, so on my statement before, I didn't mean that. You know, there's no edge in the markets. I just mean that there has, you have to have a very good reason to believe that you have an edge. So like Ashen said, if you are a specialist in the field, yes, you have an edge. For example, when I invest in recycling, because I can understand the chemistry, I have an edge over people who don't understand the chemistry because it is traded on an illiquid exchange, there might be an equal illiquid, uh, an illiquidity premium on buying the stock, but it might be undervalued because there's not that much attention on it. So that might be an edge. I think there is a lot of edge. You just have to be very clear about where you have the edge. And then on the topic before, when we were saying, okay, what's like three asset classes that are going to outperform. I think I just have no edge in that respect. I think that the world is voting with infinite amount of dollars. And that I think it's probably efficient how the market is, you know, favoring or unfavoring certain asset classes. I don't think I'd be able to outperform on that sense. But in my personal portfolio, you know, I love to pick stuff just because I think, theoretically, there's an edge in my head. And like, realistically, probably the edge is very, very small, but you know, I'll put it on because I enjoy it. Yeah. Okay. I think, Like the question that I wanted to ask you, Franklin, was, I think you experienced this after you finished your internship at Citi and Sig, like when you came back, I'm sure, you know, people in your med cohort or just your friends in general, they would have like, you know, flurried to you and asked you like, Oh, how do I invest? How do I do this? How do I do that? Do I buy this stock? How do you go about answering those questions? Because I think like, I mean, to be fair, I asked you that question when I asked you, um, top three picks and you mentioned how you don't have an edge. Is that usually the answer that you give them? Or do you usually give them, um, some, some tickers? Yeah. So I usually tell them, I usually like go through some basic investing education, like why investing is important, how you do it, um, and why an average person doesn't have edge in individual equities. Um, and then I just say, you know, like a really blanket investment, which is like you want to be diversified across equities and bonds, um, and maybe commodities. And you want to do that through cheap beta, right? So the cheapest, um, index funds you can find. So then I give them some recommendations. Um, maybe you want to look at the S and P Vanguard ETFs, or you want to have some split between, um, Australian and other world equities, uh, and then have some bond, cheap bond ETF as well. And, you know, then, then that's, that is what I usually say, like, that would be my advice, uh, not financial advice, obviously, but you know, that, that can start them on their journey. What I am trying to do actually is to hold a, you know, for friends and family, sort of personal finance. Talk basically where I just hop on a zoom call and my friends and whoever's interested can hop on as well. And then I'll go through some of like basics of investing. So I don't need to keep repeating myself, right? Because I find like, you're right. A lot of people do ask me, uh, you know, what should I invest in? And in my head, I'm like, well, if you look at my track record, you wouldn't really want to be asking me how to invest, but you know, theoretically, this is how I would do it if, if I was you. So, uh, Yeah, I think diversification is very important. Having some bonds, having some equity is very important. Yeah. Um, just touching on your time at, um, at SIG. So obviously the world of trading is very different from like global markets because it is actually a proprietary trading firm and you are making trades on a daily basis. Um, how would you say, um, your time at SIG differed from your time at Citi and how would you compare the two? Which one would you prefer? So I'm going to be biased because I was in person for SIG and I was online for Citi, right? So the experiences are going to be completely different. I have nothing bad to say about Citi. They treated me very well. They gave me a really sick experience and opportunity. And the people there were really friendly and helped me a lot, not just in finance, but in my life. So I have nothing bad to say about them, right? But I loved my SIG experience. Um, when I went to SIG, and even before I went to SIG, I could not believe that there were firms that were still prop trading, that were still just putting on ideas. And what I was really, really surprised when I got to SIG was that, that's completely true. It's not just marketing, right? It's literally, if you think you have an edge, you put it on, um, and most of the time you're market making. So at SIG, as in, I think a lot of these prop firms. There's some desks that are market making, so you're providing liquidity and some desks that are market taking and some that are a combination of both, right? So market taking just means that you're able to put on a view. Um, if you think that this thing is cheap, you can buy it. If you think it's expensive, you can sell it. And then the purely discretionary desks, you can, you might not have any market making obligations. You might make two trades a day. Right. And so you really have to game plan and find your edge and figure out why and how you're going to make money and do a lot of planning. And then you just, you just smack it on. So I thought that was really, really exciting to see. It was kind of like, these are the, like the old school Cowboys, right? Like you think that the bond is going to go up, you just buy it. It's like kind of crazy, but obviously it's more complicated than that. And, you know. Etc. But that's kind of the idea. Uh, so I, I loved that intellectual honesty that it came from having your own money on the line, which is why I would say I prefer Sig because you're constantly You constantly have to be the best version of yourself and your, your team has to be in tip top condition. You basically have to be the best at everything. And because you're competing against everyone else, who's also trying to be the best and also trying to take your money, basically it's very competitive, right? It's like a team sport. So I love that aspect of it. Um, as opposed to, I think more on the sell side, and this is not in particular city because I didn't really have any of these experiences. So I think you might have a bit more leeway into confusing explanation with prediction. So you might see that gold has gone up and, you know, a few hours later you can come up with, Oh yeah, gold went up because expectations of rates went down or whatever. You can kind of just make something up and explain it, right? But when you are trading with your own money, you can't just quote unquote make something up and explain it. You have to figure out why it happened so that you can predict it in the future. It might've happened. Gold might've gone up because some big buyer in China just bought, just decided to put a market order for 10 million of gold, right? That could have been the real reason. So I like the buy side because you're really focused on what is the truth. of these markets. What is actually happening? And how can I use that information, that knowledge to trade in the future to predict prices? I think that's far more intellectually stimulating. Um, Yeah, understood. Um, and I heard you said that it was very, like, very, uh, high output, like you had to be, sorry. I heard that you said it was, um, very high output, you had to be the best version of yourself at all times. Um, in the long term, do you see that getting exhausting? Uh, for example, like 5, 10 years down the line, having to put, having to be 100 percent there. A hundred percent of the time, otherwise you may be losing, uh, millions, uh, millions of dollars, uh, for the firm. Uh, would you say that would get exhausting in the long term? Um, are there, are the, are the same like upward compatibility as there is with like typical finance roles where, you know, you start as an analyst and an associate and then hopefully one day an md. Is that the, is that their like same kind of upper mobility in the quant like realm? Um, like. Do you go from basically making trades daily to more a managerial role in the future and that will kind of help, you know, um, with the stress levels not having to be 100 percent there 100 percent of the time? Um, yeah, what would your thoughts be on that? So on the hierarchy of traders, what I've found is that It's quite flat. So yes, the senior traders, but they're basically doing the same thing, but maybe on a more difficult product or across more products compared to an inexperienced trader. Cause the thing is like the market doesn't care if you've got one year or 20 years of experience. It's gonna try and beat you no matter what, right? So experience really matters. So if you've got 20 years of experience trading a product, you're probably one of the best people, best people to be trading that. So the company will want to put you on that product. They won't actually want you to go into like a managerial role because you'd be the best trader for that product. Um, I do think that you can burn out very easily and that you need to have good protocols in place to manage your mental health because it is high stress. It is very difficult. If you guys ever play like video games, um, or, uh, you know, chess or poker or something, it really is, let's say you're playing, let's say you like playing chess. It really is you sitting on the other side to let's say a chess grandmaster and you're playing against them and you have to make a move every 30 seconds. So there's a time limit and if you beat them, you get a million dollars. If you lose, you lose a million dollars. I'm just making an example. So, you know, the whole day, yes, you might only be operating trading hours, but you are in this incredibly taxing mental, physical battle with someone who's probably better than you. Um, and you're just playing this game constantly, right? You're going to burn out really quickly if you hate chess. If you love chess, you might actually jump on the opportunity to do that and be like, holy crap. This is the best opportunity I'll ever get to be a really good chess player. Um, to, you know, understand chess and to learn chess. And I think about the same way in trading. If you love what you do, if you actually just enjoy it, it's so much easier to not get burnt out, right? If you don't like it and you're in it for the money, the prestige, the life balance, you're just going to burn out like three years. I'll give you three years. You'll burn out because the work is far too taxing, um, for you to be doing it. For any other reason other than you love it. So you wouldn't recommend a career in trading unless you really enjoy our financial markets and making trades on a day to day basis. Um, so like, I wouldn't recommend any career to anyone if they didn't really like it because I, I think we, You know, we always take for granted that we have our whole lives in front of us, but every decision that we make is going to determine where we are like three, five years down the line, right? If you're not constantly trying to be where you think you want to be, and you're doing it because, you know, you might not love it and you're doing something else, I just think that's a waste of time. Just like spend your time, figure out what you do want, and then try your best to get that. Maybe that's a biased view, maybe that's over optimistic, but I would say that's your best chances at actually doing something that you love. Yeah. Just, just a follow up on that. Sorry, this has gone on for a while, but, um, in regards to the high turnover rate in, uh, proprietary trading firms, let's say for example, someone in university, they're studying, um, STEM degree and they're looking to get into, um, proprietary trading and, um, they're just worried that. Um, although they do love financial markets and they do have a passion for trading on a day to day basis um due to the very high turnover rate that is Um present in these propriety trading firms. Um, do you think that what advice would you give them and um, Would you say um that when you're on the team, it's not as hard as it seems um, and um What can what can you do to maximize your chances of staying there long term? Yeah, so I think You you know, the high turnover is probably both people getting fired and also people leaving. Right. So on being fired, I don't really have any advice for that. Like, um, I think if you're good enough to be hired in the first place and you work really hard and you're constantly learning and you're passionate about what you do and you're careful, it's unlikely you're going to get fired out of the job. something that you did. Um, so if there's, you know, there's always randomness, right? You could have done nothing and you could have done nothing wrong. And the firm has a terrible year and you get fired. Okay. Well, that's not really your fault. That's kind of like out of your control, right? So once again, focusing on things that we can control. And then there's that idea that we talked about earlier, burnout in any career. I like to ask people, what's the worst thing about this job? What would you want, have wanted, you know, your previous self to know about this job before you went into it? And if you can imagine yourself dealing with the worst parts of the job, you'll probably be okay. I don't like to focus on the perks, on the good stuff, because everyone likes the good stuff, right? That's not gonna, getting less of the good stuff is not why you're gonna burn out or why you're gonna quit. Why you're gonna quit is because of the worst stuff, the bad stuff. So I always like to ask people what's the worst part of their jobs. And then, you know, you use that information to, to give yourself a informed decision. And then if you think you still want to do it, you just do it anyway, right? Like you, you say, okay, I understand these are the risks. These are the things that, you know, I need to be aware of, but I love the job. I love the prospects. I think it's going to be a great learning opportunity. I'm going to do it anyway. And then you just do it. If you get fired, you know, like, It is what it is. Okay, uh, you, you should, you should obviously try to not get fired, but I, I don't know if I have any advice on how not to get fired. Right. Thanks for that answer. Um, yeah. Does, um, does anyone else want to elaborate or have any more questions? Does anyone disagree with what I'm saying as well? Like, I'm happy for you to like, sort of jump in and like challenge and something. Cause like, We're kind of getting onto the edge of what I have thought through. So maybe I'm just like talking out of, you know, just, I'm just stream of consciousness talking right now, but maybe it doesn't make sense. Or maybe you disagree with something like, please tell me. And then we can like sort of discuss it. Yeah, no, I think, I think it makes sense. And I think it's good to get your perspective on it and like your values from what you've experienced from your experience. Yeah, I really appreciate you putting into like words and explaining how, like, even though you have these like careers and these experiences that you don't necessarily have an edge compared to the entire global market. And that's something that I've like struggled to explain to people that, you know, if they come to you asking for like stock picks or whatever, like it's not something you can really answer. Um, and I really appreciate you touching on that. No worries. I think like, yep. So, um, sorry, go on. No, I was just going to say like in investing and trading, you really have to understand your edge. Like Ashton said it perfectly. When, if you're a professional in a specific area, you have an edge. And I believe that's true. Right. But if you cannot word your edge, if you can't explain your edge in like 30 seconds to someone else, why you actually can make money on this. why you're more correct in the market, then you probably just shouldn't trade it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, um, is there any final questions from anyone? I should know what they are. Uh, not from me. No, not from me. I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Um, so Franklin, thank you. Thank you very much for joining us. It's been really transformative to have you here on with, there's definitely a lot of great things to take away from this podcast. Um, yeah, so thank you to Ashton and DR as well for their great questions throughout the interview. And uh, yeah, that's pretty much it for me. Thank you for the opportunity. It was really fun talking to you guys. Hey, thank you so much.