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Xudong(Jayden) Zhang
ENG 302
27 Oct 2015
Career of Finance
When we mention the word of “finance” everyone is familiar with this
concept. Finance is one of the most popular and competitive careers. It constantly
captures people’s attention. High profit and strong accomplishments allures people
and they can’t help themselves loving this industry, even though there is extremely
high pressure. This is an overview of finance career. Knowing the risk and return,
weighing the pros and cons.
The elementary content of finance in business is about dynamics of assets
and liabilities and science of money management. Finance is to study the dynamics
of them over time under uncertainty, the role and effect in business, and how they
interact with other business fields. Simply to put, any business activity involves
money is related to finance. (Wikipedia 1)
A major in finance is mostly divided into two directions: Corporate Finance
and Financial Mathematics. Corporate finance is to study sources of funding and
the capital structure of corporations. The goal is to maximize the profits, increase
the value of shareholders’ equity, at the same time, control the financial risk.
Raising money and investment are the core of the corporate finance. Moreover, it
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also includes M&A，recapitalization, profit distribution，financial analysis and
risk management. Financial mathematics uses mathematical tools to study finance.
Using quantitative analysis of finance and model to deal with finance problems,
including financial analysis and risk management, more about pricing, valuation
and risk evaluation.
The core courses of finance contain investment analysis, corporate finance,
financial management and so on. All these courses are usually based on
economics, accounting, mathematics. A Masters in finance will include more
advanced courses, such as portfolio management, financial model, M&A, futures.
These course will require higher ability of mathematics.
In the industry of finance, there are several fields. Firstly, investment
banking is a quite known field. It generally helps individuals, corporations, or
government raise financial capital by underwriting or acting as clients’ agency to
issue securities. It also involves M&A, market making, and FICC services. Then,
the sales and trading refers to activities buying and selling securities and other
financial instruments. Next is private equity, it is a trading of equity security and
debt in operating company that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange.
Fourthly, the hedge fund takes a higher than average risk appetite, pools funds
from a large amount of investors and invests in securities and other instruments.
Hedge fund companies bankrupt easier than others and salary is more volatile. At
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last, management consulting is also one of the important fields. It helps companies
or individuals improve their performance via analysis of existing organizational
problems and development of plans (David 1).
A friend of mine who has worked in the industry for ten years said to me if I
want to get into finance career for making great fortune overnight, it is not a good
strategy, because it cannot make me very rich in a very short time. I really don’t
have to abandon my interest to enter this industry for money. Just like NIKE said
“Just do it.” Most individuals in finance do not mention the potential big risk they
are bearing and working overtime under high pressure at the sacrifice of their own
life, even those that are senior managers. If I want to reach the top level of the
industry to make great money, it will take ten to twenty years or more, there is no
faster way. Networking is an important part of all of the fields mentioned above,
which many people do not talk about much. Finally, be careful about finding an
exit opportunity. It won’t be easy to change from one field to another.
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Work Cited
"Finance." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, July 2013. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.
Kochanek, David. "Financial Career Options For Professionals." Investopedia. N.p., 14 Sept.
2008. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.