Armando Sanchez
University of St. Thomas
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Andrew Yuwen, Leadership Development Program, Investment Management, Phoenix (33.4° N, 112.0° W)

What motivates you? What goals do you strive to accomplish? Would your ideal future self look back at what you are doing right now and see you making progress toward him? These are some questions that I contemplated after interviewing Andy Yuwen, who graduated from Rice University in 2018 with a BA in chemical and biomolecular engineering, mathematical economic analysis, and managerial studies. Andy is now in a leadership development program at a large investment management firm that allows him to work in different parts of his company, rotating positions every six months. He has answered questions from 401(k) participants, worked as a project manager in a cost basis department, and worked in a leadership position on the trade floor. Currently, he is an investment analyst supporting relationship managers and salespeople. 

Since Andy is based in Arizona, we agreed to have the conversation through Google Hangouts.  Andy is relatively fresh out of college, but he already has a wide skill set and many opportunities in his future. Therefore, I was especially curious about the energy and motivation that has driven him to his current position in life. 

Andy pursued various interests at Rice. One of the classes that had the biggest impact on him was Probability and Statistics. He explained how the general public lacks a basic understanding of statistics. He pointed out that the knowledge he gained from this class, which he took as a freshman, could be applied to virtually any job in any field. Being able to filter out noise and randomness from data sets is crucial when working with investments in his current position. 

What makes Andy unique is his perspective on the relationship between his life and his career. The child of Chinese immigrants, Andy has always been passionate in all his activities. He was able to excel simultaneously in both academic and extracurricular pursuits. Growing up, he learned to play violin and also played tennis competitively. One can only make significant progress when their work becomes a lifestyle. An athlete must not only put in hours on the court to be good, he must also allow the sport to seep into every aspect of his life; from diet, to research, to sleep schedule, every aspect is affected. It is the same for a musician; taking lessons is one thing but to progress as an artist, one must dedicate their lifestyle to the craft. It is clear Andy has these characteristics. Even while pursuing multiple majors and working part-time, Andy found the time to lead Rice Club Tennis. He also became a teaching assistant for the statistics class mentioned earlier. After graduation, this mindset has not faltered; he continues to maintain this energy at the dawn of his professional career.

I was getting a sense of his mindset throughout the interview process and Andy’s answer to my final question really solidified my impressions. He explained that he was not interested in the idea of success or failure; he was there for the experience. He told me, “I don’t think you should be driven by success. I don’t think that’s a healthy or sustainable mindset because you are going to have failures.” I came to the conclusion that life is not about working to achieve something in the future; rather, life is about achieving something through work in the present. 

Highlights from the Interview

What led you to your current position?

During college, I had the opportunity to be a leader in many regards. I led Rice’s Club Tennis team, I led a community service organization, and I was on the executive board of our student admissions council, which is the student wing of the admissions office. Through those kinds of leadership experiences, I thought I might want to be a leader in industry. That’s what led me to join a leadership development program at a large investment manager.

I’m about 20 months into my program so far and I’ve had a lot of different shifts. My first role was on the phones, answering questions from 401(k) participants. My second role was as a project manager in a cost basis department. It was a very generalist role in a very technical department. And then my third rotation was on our trade floor as a people leader, leading some of our analysts who provide data for our front-office and back-office functions. Through those experiences, I decided I did not want to go into formal leadership. So, I’m currently in an investment analyst position where I’m answering investment questions for our relationship managers and sales executives who are interacting with institutional clients and their consultants. I launch from this program in August, and then we’ll see where that takes me.

Along the way, you figure out what you’re interested in. And for me, I’m interested in almost everything. So then you figure out what skills are most useful for you to develop early on in your career and then you navigate towards that. And I think you can benefit a lot from being open-minded about what exact goal that means. I didn’t necessarily script out every move that I’ve made so far. I’ve learned a lot from allowing some chance or randomness in my career. 

What specific class or classes do you think prepared you the most for this position?

I didn’t take many classes at Rice that were specifically applicable to this position. We didn’t have a business major for undergraduates, and I only took about two classes in our business school. But I would say that the most generally applicable class I took my freshman year was Probability and Statistics. I was taking it with a new professor at the time, Philip Ernst, and did really well in the class, so I ended up TAing for him my sophomore, junior, and senior years. In finance, and actually in almost every field, you have to have a good understanding of probability and statistics. I think that’s absolutely crucial, and it’s something that not a lot of people have. It’s definitely a gap in the market because there’s a lot in the world that is random and being able to cut through all the randomness and the noise to get to the bottom line, or understand what’s really going on behind all of the noise, is crucial.

So, for instance, I get a lot of questions from institutional clients and consultants that are asking about why certain funds are underperforming. If you do a statistical analysis, then you’ll realize that pretty much every fund is going to underperform for extended periods of time and that’s just noise, that’s just randomness. So, it does teach you to take a longer-term view and be a little bit more strategic about the way that you invest and the way that you think about problems. Because the short term doesn’t always matter much. You need to think about problems far away and think about investing, for instance, from a 30-year, 40-year type of timeframe.

Do you like your current position?

I’m in a rotational program. I rotate every six months. And my program is coming to an end, so at the end of this six-month rotation, I’ll be in a more long-term role. I do really like my current position; I am learning a lot from my peers as well as from more senior strategists and analysts. And I’m learning a lot about investments and products and the way that mutual funds and ETFs [exchange-traded funds] are managed. I also think that, in general, in your early career, you benefit a lot from moving around and getting different experiences. So, in four months when I’m done with this rotation, it’s likely that I’m not going to be in this role anymore, and that’s kind of bittersweet. I’ll miss my teammates and some of the experiences and the things that I get to do in this rotation. But I’ll hopefully move onto a role that’s going to teach me new things and provide me with a different perspective.

Looking at your LinkedIn, you have definitely accomplished a lot; you’ve done a lot of things. How were you able to stay motivated in all that?

There are a couple of answers to that question. It depends on what drives you fundamentally and how you view your life and your career. I do think that a lot of people view their life and career as being separate, and their life is something where they have friends and family, and their career is a way of financing that life. I personally take a different view. I think there’s two parts of my career. There’s my interest in both developing myself intellectually and developing myself as a person, which also makes me better in my personal life. And then there’s also the impact side. I have a very strong service mindset, and I want to dedicate my career to service. Different people take different approaches to this; some people go into public service and become public defense attorneys or policymakers or policy analysts. For me, I think the way that I’m best able to contribute to the community is to further the conversation on investments. Understanding wealth generation, understanding how people should invest, and bringing those products to those investors is what currently makes me passionate.

But going back to previous parts of my career, I don’t think you should be driven by success. I don’t think that’s a healthy or sustainable mindset because you are going to have failures, and you can look at my LinkedIn and see all of the successes that I’ve had, but there’s obviously been a lot of failures along the way. And if you’re only motivated by success, those failures would be absolutely devastating. But for me, I try to keep a long-term and developmental view in which I’m constantly comparing myself to the person that I’m going to be in 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And focusing on how I can make myself a better community servant. And so, when I fail, that’s an opportunity for me to learn. It’s oftentimes a misalignment; if I don’t get a job, it’s because I wasn’t ready for that job, or I was not aligned to that job. And that’s completely fine. And that allows me to immediately start thinking about what the next opportunity is or what the next thing that I could do might be. 

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. 

Alishahal Macknojia
University of Houston
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Kenneth Misner, Regional Vice President, Touchstone Investments, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

Kenneth Misner is a regional vice president at Touchstone Investments. He graduated from Rice University in 2014, majoring in Spanish and business, and also completed a summer semester at Yale University in financial accounting in 2012. After graduating from Rice, Kenneth started as an internal sales consultant and rose to regional advisor consultant at Invesco prior to his current role.

We practiced social distancing and conducted our interview remotely while both of us were in Houston. I had the opportunity to ask Kenneth about how he acquired both the relationship building and technical skills that he uses today. Growing up, he was always naturally drawn to the financial services industry and eventually found his mission in wholesaling to financial advisors. At Invesco, Kenneth realized the importance of treating other wholesalers as peers rather than just competition. This opened my eyes to seeing sales, which is normally associated with an aggressive competitive strategy, in a more pacifist and friendly light. The same wholesalers who covered the same region and advisors are in contest with you, but they do not necessarily always oppose you. This professional network of other wholesalers benefited Kenneth when he moved to Touchstone Investments and advanced his career.

I also learned that Kenneth’s father, who also spent considerable time in the same industry, is now one of his clients. In our conversation, we discussed what it was like to be working with a family member. He told me about the benefits of having him as a “sounding board” and person he can go to for advice with less judgement.

Kenneth highlighted to me the value of communication skills in his role as a regional vice president. Since his clients are the advisors who are working with people at a personal level, his job demands a lot of relationship skills. Much of his time is spent meeting with advisors in person and traveling to regions like Louisiana.

I think that Kenneth’s background in humanities and his time spent learning business communication have helped him convey himself to his clients successfully. He discussed how to write concise emails and why he chooses to do follow-up emails and handwritten thank you notes. From our conversation, other people coming out of college can discover if they have any of the qualities or interests that are needed to follow opportunities from portfolio management or internal sales to wholesaling.

Claire Wang
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Naoki Shiba, Credit Trader, Barclays, Tokyo (35.6° N, 139.6° E)

Naoki Shiba is a credit trader at Barclays in Tokyo. He graduated from Rice University in 2017 with a degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering and a minor in computational and applied mathematics.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Naoki, who is based in Tokyo, while I was across the world in Charleston. In the interview, we talked about his decision to pursue trading at Barclays. Although Naoki majored in engineering, he was ultimately drawn to the fast-paced culture of trading at an investment bank, in contrast with the long paperwork and approval processes he experienced as an intern at an engineering firm. While the engineering-specific knowledge did not transfer over to trading, Naoki still applies the same analysis and problem-solving skill set from his engineering background to his current role.

As a credit trader at a global firm, Naoki trades corporate bonds, interacting with clients all over Asia, ranging from central banks to asset management companies, life insurance companies, and retail clients. In his position, quantitative and communication skills are a must, whether it’s calculating and analyzing risks associated with a certain bond on the spot and making quick decisions given news and market movements, or speaking with sales around the world in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Korea, New York, and London.

For Naoki, who is bilingual in English and Japanese and grew up in both Europe and the United States, Barclays Japan was a great fit for his background. I think that an important takeaway from the interview is to explore opportunities abroad, especially for students who, like Naoki, have a cultural advantage and language fluency: it may lead to a more fulfilling career, to be that cultural bridge between one country and another.

Another important point that Naoki mentioned was the influence of technology on the financial industry. As technology continues to increase efficiency and ability, there is a gradual shift toward data science and algorithmic trading. And it comes as no surprise that financial institutions like Barclays are increasingly interested in recruiting individuals with tech and data science backgrounds, who are capable of developing and understanding new technology. I think this is a reminder to students that it’s important to reach out to professionals in their field of interest early for advice and to gain applicable skills to stay ahead of the curve.

Highlights from the interview

How did you come into working at Barclays in Tokyo?

I’m originally Japanese, but I grew up both in the US and in Europe due to my dad’s job. I always had international experiences so working at an international company in Japan was a pretty good fit for my skills and my background. The fact that I can speak both Japanese and English helps connect Japan with the rest of the world. So, being that cultural bridge was also something that drew me to Barclays Japan as well.

When did you first envision yourself as a credit trader/analyst?

Originally I was an engineering major in college. I studied chemical and biomedical engineering. I did an internship in my junior year in an engineering firm. Although it was pretty interesting, with engineering there is paperwork, a process that is fairly long, to do some real analytical work. There’s a lot of approvals that you have to get, budget approvals, legal approvals, whereas in an investment bank, things go fairly quickly. Especially on the market side. You can make decisions. I liked that fast-paced culture of working in an investment bank and on the market side. So that’s what primarily what drew me to trading and being on the market side.

Did you have a mentor or someone who helped cultivate your interests in that?

Actually, I didn’t. I just applied. I didn’t have any connections to the company. When I was in my junior year, I had a few friends, seniors, that were going into investment banks into some roles, and I could hear their experiences with interviewing with people or their experiences with internships. So I got a more clear sense of what the job might be like, and I thought it might be a good fit for me.

What exactly does your position entail? Could you walk me through a day?

As a credit trader, we trade corporate bonds. So, companies need to raise money, and they can do that through equity—so that’s like your stock market, all your company stocks. Or they can get these loans. They can loan investors a certain amount of money, pay them a certain coupon. That’s what a bond is. And I can trade those. I can buy and sell those, and by buying at a low price and selling at a higher price I can generate revenues for the firm. That’s what I do as a trader, but I get to interact with a lot of clients that are obviously investing in these companies, central banks. Because I’m based in Asia I primarily focus on Asian banks. But we also focus on other, smaller clients as well, so like asset management companies, life insurance companies, as well as personal banks, retail clients as well. You get to speak to a lot of people. Even though I’m based in Japan, I’m not just trading with Japanese clients or interacting with Japanese clients. Barclays is a global firm, so there’s a lot of connections to Hong Kong, Korea, and other countries in Asia as well.

Are you mostly at a trading desk all day or do you usually go meet with clients?

I work first to see what’s going on in the news. I guess with the China and Japan trade wars right now, the market’s pretty volatile—and so, first, catching up with the daily news, seeing how the market’s moving. And after that, it’s a lot of knowing what clients will want to do given the headlines or the news that comes out overnight or during the day. If there’s a very negative headline, a lot of clients are going to want to sell their bonds, sell their investments. So I’ve got to make sure I’m trying to help those clients and buy those investments off of them but also in a profitable way so I know I can sell those investments or bonds at a higher price later. So that’s what we do…make sure we’re updating clients on a regular basis on how the market’s moving or certain profitable investments that they can start looking at…so that’s sort of what I do on a day-to-day.

What skills do you find yourself using the most in your position?

Obviously, quantitative skills are pretty important. I analyze how risky a certain bond might be. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with a lot of finance, but a lot of it is basic net present value discounting type calculations, but just being able to quickly calculate things in your head is important. Because if a client wants to sell an investment, you only have like, maybe max 10 minutes, if you want to price it or not. So just being able to be comfortable with numbers is definitely something that’s valuable.

Another thing is communication skills. Given that the markets move globally, being able to speak with sales in Tokyo, as well as in Hong Kong ,as well as in Korea, in New York, in London—those are the main financial centers—is pretty important as well.

Then the last one is sort of where you get information. Being attentive and getting that information. In terms of markets, anything can move the market, so a small little detail can be an explanation for something really big that’s going on, whether in the foreign exchange market or in the rates market. If you have that information, then you have that competitive advantage, but if you don’t have that information, then it can work against you because you don’t know why something’s moving the way it is. So just being attentive, making sure you’re reading the news. But also a lot of the relationships you make with other people in other countries are very helpful because then you know what those clients are doing at all times. That gives you a lot of information on why the market is moving the way it is.

You come from an engineering background. Do you use anything from your major in your current position?

I do not. That’s the quickest answer. But I think, with engineering, it’s breaking down problems and coming up with solutions analytically. That sort of skill definitely I use.

What made you choose Barclays in particular? Was it the culture? What makes it stand out as a good place to work?

In terms of investment banks, in terms of culture, there’s the US banks—the Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, those types of banks—and then you have your European banks—so Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Barclays—and definitely when you interview with them or you interact with people from those firms, there’s definitely a different culture. In the US, it is very aggressive. It’s let’s get things done in the quickest, most efficient way as possible, whereas in the European culture, it’s a little more relaxed. I mean, people are fairly Type A personalities, as you would expect in an investment bank. It’s a little more relaxed. They’re not as strict about certain rules, so it gives you a little more freedom to speak up. Even though I’m currently in my second year, which is still a junior in an investment bank, being able to speak up to people that have worked at the firm for 10-20 years is more possible in a European bank just given the more relaxed, flatter culture that they have.

Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?

With a trader it’s hard to say. Like in consulting, you start as a consultant, then become an associate, become a partner, and there’s a clear career path in that sense, in terms of how you’ll get promoted. Whereas with a trader, it’s more about how much risk you can take. Currently, I’m pretty limited in terms of how much risk I can take and how much investments I can buy off of clients or sell to clients. As I progress, I want to expand those risk limits, so being able to trade with bigger clients on a more frequent basis is definitely something that I’m looking forward to in the next five years. In terms of the role itself, it’s pretty much the same thing, but it’s more about how much the company’s willing to trust you with your risk-taking.

How would you say science and technology shape the work that you do?

In the very beginning, in terms of looking at financial markets, everything was done with paper and pen. You buy an investment off a client, you record it with paper and pen, and then you send it out. Now it’s…everything’s all digital. Everything, even the inquiries we get from clients are sometimes just sent electronically. So, in that sense, technology has definitely impacted our business in terms of making things more efficient for both clients and for us in terms of seeing different inquiries, booking different inquiries. But, also, in terms of the data science move, there’s a lot of more algorithmic trading. In the past, the process has been—client comes to Barclays, says they want to invest in something or they want to sell an investment in something, then we would look at it manually, analyze it manually, whereas now some of it is done with algorithms. So when a client wants to sell an investment, an algorithm will shoot out a price to them. So, in that sense, a lot more technology savvy data scientists are actually wanted, whereas in the past it was more like all majors are welcome. But currently there’s a huge focus on hiring people who are capable…developing and understanding new technology.

What advice would you give a student interested in credit trading?

I think there’s a huge focus, especially at Rice, at least when I was there, to take as many classes and get the highest GPA as you can…I should have been more proactive in all the extracurriculars where you develop communications skills. So being able to communicate with your peers, and actually accomplishing things through your clubs, is more important than sort of only studying and getting the highest grade on your exam or midterm or whatever. I guess that doesn’t apply just to credit trading, but I guess it’s advice that I would have for any future graduate.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.