Following the morning meeting, I start to tackle the plan that I have set out for the day. However, as the market is highly news driven, you never know how your day will turn out. A lot of things happen ad hoc, e.g., larger acquisitions or other events being announced by the companies in your coverage, client meetings, or assisting your colleagues. As such, I find my job to be very invigorating, as you get a good mix of high-paced work and time to reflect, enabling you to work on longer research reports and smaller updates on the companies you are covering, or intend to cover.
What triggers and motivates you the most?
In addition to the above mentioned, I find the responsibility you get as junior analyst highly motivating, as you early on get to cover smaller companies. As smaller companies generally are covered by fewer analysts, and often are not too “discovered” by the market, you are able to form the narrative around the stocks.
Furthermore, being part of a major organisation as Nordea implies that you both get to learn from and work with some of the best people in the industry, while utilising the network it entails. As a junior, I find this to be a great funnel to meet everyone from investors and industry leaders to experts in different niches – something I highly value.
Any piece of advice to people who might be considering a career in finance, and perhaps as an analyst?
Hopefully, you have got some sort of idea of how a day as a research analyst looks like at Nordea. However, I want to emphasise that despite the somewhat longer hours than the classic 40-hour week, the work also entails a great deal of flexibility, and you can often easily plan your workload. On the other hand, there is no limit to what you can do when it comes to research, in which the most valued research is often not done behind the computer screen.