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20#
发表于 2013-4-20 05:28
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panos.kollias wrote:
Apparently I have to make a clearer explanation, for the sake of future viewers of the thread who might be discouraged by aaron’s “advice”.
1) Why microeconomics won’t tell you if you are meant to work as an investment professional:
Microeconomics is the study that concerns itself with individual choice and, of course, the implications of those choices to the market. To that end, a typical syllabus will include choice under uncertainty, price mechanism, game theory, mechanism design etc. While all of those would concern an “economist” in order to better understand the underlying forces, to form policy, to manage auctions or even more relatively, to make further academic research, it most certainly won’t bother a financial analyst, an investment banker, a portfolio manager. That, is because the latter professions are “tool users” while an economist is required to understand the basics behind the tools. YES, you do have to know basic principles, and YES the more you know the better for every profession , but that doesn’t make it relative to your profession or even optimal in a cost – benefit sense.
To make the example perhaps simpler, if you use excel functions and VBA you don’t call yourself a programmer and, subsequently, if you find a course about programming boring (which might be needed in order to do some basic vba) it most certainly does not mean that you are going to be disinterested in an excel based research – let’s say sales volume forecasting.
2) Why does Wikipedia, in this instance, reveal a lack of familiarity with the topic:
Let’s not fool ourselves. As most of us have gone through some sort of training, whether college, grad school or even PhD, Wikipedia is an indispensable tool in giving leads towards further and more concrete research. I have no problems settling an argument based on Wikipedia most of the times, but here it is obviously used to cover for the lack of understanding. That is because aaron , assumed that the term “financial economics” is enough to show the similarity between “finance” and “economics”. The irony here is that, Wikipedia, correctly describes the field and distinguishes between the branch of microeconomics and financial economics: financial economics is concerned with portfolio theory, security returns, return of capital. Added to that is the fact that even financial economics, in my view, is a step above what the typical investment professional needs to conduct his everyday business. Yes, everybody knows that finance is built upon economics, few (to the dismay of many economists) however, manage to see the practical difference. If I had a cent for every time somebody confused finance, accounting, economics and business maangement…
To make a long story, shorter : When you give advice to somebody who undertakes a considerably difficult goal, in the OFF chance that your advice matters, better know what you are talking about and ESPECIALLY if you are going to discourage. More responsible strategies would be to either encourage or keep quiet.
So, no msChristineTo and whoever else cares, if you found that particular reading boring, it does not mean, not by a mile, that you need to find a new field. It merely means that you have to tough it out and try to make it interesting until you enter a topic that is more to your liking.
Apologies for the poor English.
Blah blah blah, you’re chastizing aaron for not having famliarity with the topic, but he’s passed LI, I’ve finished the program some time ago and you’re a candidate. If I have to choose between lecturing the people who’ve cleared a hurdle I’m facing and just taking their advice, I find it helps to take their advice. |
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