It was in the early days of January that I was notified about my internship at WGC Wealth, a wealth management firm as the name suggests which is located in Worli, South Mumbai. The excitement at that time was palpable as it was offering the kind of role I was hoping to get, an opportunity to sit and work in the Equity Research Team.
Soon enough it was time to be at the office and the first day was my first chance to see people working at the Bloomberg terminal making models based on client requests while simultaneously working on the internal publications of the company. After having spoken with the Human Resources team I was allotted a place with the team of 3, where I was hoping to learn as much as I could.
As the days rolled by, the work being given also increased, not only in terms of quantum but also in terms of the responsibilities, where I got the opportunity to work on the 2 monthly publications, on their data in Excel as well as the final PPTs, the data of which was being sourced from various sources such as Bloomberg, Reuters as well as CMIE. 1 report was only for internal purposes, catering to the portfolio managers and all others involved in taking a call whereas the other report was more client oriented, a consolidated version of the first report explaining why some decisions were made and how the outlook is in the near future.
The other major aspect of the 2 months that I spent there was understanding how to write stock recommendations, the one page reports explaining the decision a company takes as to whether the stock is to be bough or sold. As it was the time for elections during the time there, there was a lot going on in the markets, with certain stocks on the rise, and they needed to be included in the basket of stocks that were being monitored by the company. This gave me the chance to write the recommendations for some companies, learning a lot in the process as to what all information is to be put in the report and how it is relevant in terms of the past as well as how it will affect the near future.
Having spent one year pursuing the postgraduate degree, there were a lot of instances where I could apply what I learnt, especially in terms of soft skills, where the communication in corporate culture is very different from that in a college atmosphere in terms of verbal as well as interactions over email. This is one area on which juniors, especially people with no work experience can better themselves at as it will be a major help for them.
The mentor I was assigned was extremely helpful in helping me understand the workings of the stock market and how the research team makes the required models as per the needs. He guided me through the entire process of using the different terminals and also how to retrieve the required information for all the components that go into writing a Stock Recommendation in an effective manner. I would like to thank him for all the guidance and the great experience that I had at WGC Wealth.
