Advice for those starting their careers in finance

The Street

Liz Ann Sonders, Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, shares her advice for those just starting their career in finance.

Transcript

00:00Things have changed so much since you started working in finance.

00:03If you were getting started now, what would you do differently or what advice do you have?

00:07Well, I think the opportunities are extraordinary and in particular maybe for women.

00:12When I started in 1986, it was much more and I started in New York, you know,

00:18work working at a Wall Street firm and it, you know, the original movie Wall Street

00:24was, you know, it was stretched a bit for the benefit of, you know, the movies but it wasn't

00:31all that stretched relative to the kind of old boys network and boiler room kind of stuff.

00:38I was very fortunate to be at a firm that, you know, believed in diversity and promoting women

00:47but I think opportunities in general are extraordinary right now and also for women.

00:51I think there's been an interesting shift too within sort of this category of big Wall Street

00:57firms away from just day-to-day trading and, you know, stock picking to wealth management

01:05and financial planning and in that space, the world of wealth managers and registered

01:10investment advisors, independent asset management firms, not to mention the wealth management

01:16divisions within many of the larger organizations. I think there's such a huge opportunity there

01:22because in the case of the individual, you know, managers, the RAA space, registered investment

01:28advisors, it's really a first-generation business and one of the things we're working with the

01:33advisors on our platform is around succession planning and anytime you have an industry that

01:39is a first-generation industry that's been around now for a while, the opportunities associated with

01:45that planning for the next generation, I think, provides great opportunities and I continue to

01:52think that Wall Street gets painted with a negative brush too often and that's one of the

01:57conversations I often have with young people who are considering entering into this

02:01business. I think it's a great business and it does get painted with, I think,

02:07an erroneous brush or too broadly and, by the way, it's also fun and the thing I like

02:14most about what I do specifically, but I talk to a lot of people in this industry that

02:20agree with me, is there's almost no monotony. Every single day you wake up and there's something

02:27new, in my case, to write about, to talk about, to think about and I find that exciting. What is the

02:32biggest risk you've taken in your career? So it was really shifting from my, I guess it was my first

02:4115 years in the business and I've been doing this for 38 years. I was a portfolio manager. I was a

02:47bottom-up stock picker. I didn't enjoy that at all. I particularly didn't enjoy the period from

02:53the mid to late 90s when, at the time, I worked for a single mandate aggressive large-cap growth

03:01firm and I didn't like being pigeonholed in that kind of mandate. I was always more fascinated by

03:08top-down macro analysis, figuring out the big picture and sentiment trends and monetary policy

03:15and its impact on the economy and market. So when I joined Schwab via its acquisition of U.S. Trust

03:22and was offered the opportunity to take on this role, which had not existed before at Schwab,

03:28they gave me a lot of rope and a lot of freedom to sort of create the role in the, you know,

03:36vision of Schwab and what makes us unique relative to a lot of the traditional Wall Street firms

03:41because we have individual investors and I think that audience is very different from

03:47institutional investors and it's why we don't do short-term market timing and year-end price

03:51targets. But, you know, taking on that role and not having somebody in the role before to emulate,

03:57I think, was probably the biggest risk. But I've, you know, I've been thrilled at the ride so far.

04:06you

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