How To Get A Job As An Equity Analyst with Sara Grillo

ValueWalk’s Raul Panganiban interviews Sara Grillo, CFA, founder of Sara Grillo. She is a marketing consultant, “No BS” Keynote Speaker, and Podcast Host.

Q1 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more

Interview with Sara Grillo

Transcript

Hello podcast listeners. Today’s very special episode with a Sara Grillo, CFA, founder of Sara Grillo. She’s a marketing consultant, no BS keynote speaker and podcast hosts. Before this, she worked as a financial advisor at Empire Wealth Strategies, and was an associate at Lehman Brothers. She earned her bachelor’s from Harvard University and her MBA from NYU. In today’s episode, we discuss how to break into equity research. If you want more in depth information, I encourage everyone to check out her YouTube channel Sara Grillo. I want to welcome Sarah to the show, and I want to welcome all our listeners to a very special episode.

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Welcome to ValueTalk with Raul.

All right, just wanted to welcome all our listeners to a very special episode. I have Sara Grillo, CFA, marketing consultant. And Sarah, welcome to the show.

Hey, Raul. Thank you for having me.

All right, yeah, if we can just begin with your background and what led you to finance field?

What led me to the finance field was way back in the day when I was in college, I had this awful job. I had to work at the Faculty club where I went to school, which meant I had to be a waitress in the restaurant where professors would take their students for like special lunches and dinners and stuff, so I actually had to wait on them as a waitress. Okay. Right, kind of demeaning. And I remember there was one day I was walking around in Boston, where I’m from, and I saw a ticker tape with all of these symbols flashing and I was just like that I was so intrigued by it. I remember I stood there, staring And, you know, there I was this kid like no real skills. Just a dream, really. And so I at that time, we didn’t really have internet. I mean, we may have had internet searches and stuff like that, but I was not into the internet. I was, you know, sophomore in college or whatever. And so at that point, I sent out a resume via, like, you know, used to do those form mail merges, like, I’m using word processors, you know, I sent out like, an actual physical letter to Fidelity Investments, and I got my internship at Fidelity Investments, and I’ve just been involved with finance in one way or another ever since.

Yeah, I saw that you worked as an equity analyst and topic of our conversation is going to be how to become an equity analyst. Before we dive into that, can you just tell me about your working experience as an analyst?

Yeah. So I, my first job out of college had this job at JPMorgan providing marketing support for the custody and trade settlement product and was really successful there. You know, I’m a natural writer. And you can see now like, I’m a social media influencer been real successful at that. I do believe that that was actually my calling in life. But, you know, I was so intrigued by the stock market, I just I was successful had been promoted, but I was like, not like, I really want to be it, you know what I mean? Like, I want to be the product and be a fund manager. And at that point, that was before the advent of mutual like ETFs that was when mutual funds were still really popular. So being a portfolio manager have an actual 1940 act. Mutual Fund was like a really a thing. It was my dream in life and I was so intent on it. Then I went out and I got a job on the buy side. And at first it was just using my natural skills, my marketing skills. And then I just kind of worked in from there while I was at the firm, I was always running around asking people, you know, do you I would go to the portfolio managers that I’d be like, here’s your briefing, you know, I did this PowerPoint for you. But by the way, I was thinking about this point you made? And would you like me to do a little bit more research on this particular stock or on this particular model that you’re using? And they were, of course, like, Yes, because I was right there, I was a resource. It wasn’t costing them anything. And I was willing to do the extra work after hours or whatever. And that’s how I just kind of made my way over to being in an equity research role on the buy side at that firm. I got an offer from Lehman that I couldn’t refuse wasn’t really a great match for me, like I said, like my natural thing in life is more on the communications angle and not as much in the like pounding the models angle, but Lehman ended anyways. So I wasn’t there for long, maybe, like about a year. And, you know, I’ve been not an equity analyst since that point. But I was an equity research associate at Lehman Brothers, maybe about 10 years ago. So that’s the part of my career I feel is really relevant to the people listening that actually what all of you, I think want to do, I actually did do it. And that’s what I’m going to advise you about today.