How to Stand Out in Finance in the Age of AI (Students Must Watch)

Hello and welcome back to the Market Maker podcast. And as you can see, it's not Piers. I'm joined by a very special guest, Ignacio Ramírez Moreno, a fixed income advisor by day, a self-described finance nerd by nature, and someone who genuinely loves making complex stuff easy to understand, which is why I think you're going to love this conversation because that's what we are all about on the Market Maker podcast, demystifying and making things super easy to understand. So we're going to cover some topics certainly going to be useful for students interested in finance, all the way through to advice for professionals already working in the industry. But Ignacio, this feels way overdue. How are you?

Oh my God, it's such an honor to be here. And for our listeners, you must know something. Anthony was the first guest I ever had on my show on The Blonde Dollar, the first one to believe in what I was building. So I felt one day I had to come back and give it all. So thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here and couldn't be more excited to be talking to you today.

Brilliant. Well, look, we'll talk about The Blunt Dollar for sure, because you have interviewed some incredible guests and I'd love to get some insights into that. But maybe before that, something which I think is useful both for students thinking about finance, but also those working in industry is your LinkedIn banner says And your profile specifically talks about turning news into insights. The world right now feels like it's forever giving in terms of news. There's so much stuff across so many different things that are happening. I guess one of those barriers then you can face is, what do I even talk about? There's just so much to talk about. But that's almost like, I guess, the secret sauce of what makes your content great. So What's your kind of filter to pick out the kind of noise from the signal, so to speak?

Hmm. Yeah. Paralysis by analysis, right? Like there's so much stuff going on and it's a great question because we live in a society where everyone is fighting for attention, both traditional media outlets, but also us creators. And quite frankly, I'm still trying to figure it out, the answer to that question. But I guess my rule of thumb is I try to speak about things that I find interesting myself. What would I like to be reading about? How would I like it to be explained to me if I was not the one writing actually this piece? And in my case, and maybe this is the common denominator for everything I produce, I've always felt that Finance was a little bit intimidating, a little bit complex, not the sexiest of topics, sometimes unnecessarily, yeah, complicated in some ways. And I thought, you know what, I'd like to explain these things in a way that my parents will understand it. My wife would understand it. Eventually my kids. I want to make it a little bit more casual, keep it serious, but just make it more accessible. Maybe using words that everyone would understand, craft images that would be more entertaining. And with that in mind, with that philosophy, I started to scan the market with fresh eyes and just think, okay, what would someone that maybe is not a fixed income advisor in a private bank, what would that person want to read about? And then, well, really, if you follow me, you see that I post about a variety of different topics. At the beginning, I was just talking about fixed income, but very soon I realized that not everyone is as nerdy about bonds as I am. So my pieces on bonds never were the most viral, let's say. So I started to expand and tap into other parts of markets and At the end of the day, yeah, it's about experimenting and writing about stuff that you find interesting yourself. And now in a nutshell, what I do is every morning, I mean, as a fixed income advisor, the first thing I do when I get to the office is I open the FD, I open Bloomberg, and I open all the research coming from the different IBs. And I have this radar at the back of my mind, and whenever I see something interesting, a story that I feel could fosters some debate, I, you know, I write a note about it and say, okay, maybe I should give it a shot. And it's really like that. It's my feel. I wish I could give you a magic formula where I have a super structured process, but it's more about what do I find interesting and giving it a shot. And the cool thing is that if you try something and it doesn't work, you can try it again tomorrow and nothing happens, right? That's the beauty and the curse of social media, I guess.

Do you have any— a lot of the listeners might have access to something like a Bloomberg terminal, whether on the university campus or in the workplace. Is there any unusual or go-to places in terms of lookups on the terminal that you go to where you find just interesting content? Because it's such a monster platform. What are some of your go-to places on Bloomberg?

My God, we could spend a whole hour talking about this. Listeners need to understand that Bloomberg, for people like me, is like our right hand. We cannot work without it. I've been using Bloomberg since my first day at the office. I've been lucky enough to always have a terminal for me because fixed income markets are very particular. It's an over-the-counter market. A lot of the action happens in the chat rooms. So if you are in fixed income, you need to have a Bloomberg, basically. And there's so many functions. As Anthony was saying, it's a massive beast. But I guess the first thing I do when I get there in the morning is read, R-E-A-D. That's like the most read news within the platform filtered by different, you can filter them by different categories. Then I go to top bond. The top little acronym is very useful because it works for everything. You can say top bonds, top equities, top Anthony Cheung, and it's going to show you the top news related to those keywords that you put afterwards. So I read about fixed income and credit also, like top credit, top private credit and things like that. And then the one that I discovered not so long ago, I actually made a post about it like maybe, I think 5 or 6 months ago, but I'm absolutely addicted to now is Chart, C-H-A-R-T, because in a nutshell, what it does is that, um, It takes all the charts within the Bloomberg terminal and shows them to you. And you can filter by asset class, by publication date, by author. I have them in chronological order across the board. So basically I open that and I see all the charts that have been published in the last day or two in the whole terminal. And then you have hundreds of them and you just skim through and the moment you see a good chart, you recognize it, right? Like you're like, oh wow. And then you press. And it brings you to the article where the chart was initially taken from. And then yeah, like just those 3 things, you know, take already a bunch of time. And then of course, like there's newsletters. So in Bloomberg, my favorite newsletter is Points of Return by John Authers. It's an absolute read if you have Bloomberg. And outside of Bloomberg, I also love to read every morning Amplify's newsletter, of course, that's a must. If you haven't subscribed, please make sure to subscribe. It's really, really good. And then I read FT's Unhedged by Robert Armstrong. For me, that's probably also one of the best ones. Markets AM from Spencer Jacob, Wall Street Journal. Super good also. And yeah, and then of course if you have certain asset classes you're interested by, there's other things you can look at. But yeah, those 3 or 4 that I mentioned are a must for sure.

Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. The charts, looking at charts, doesn't necessarily need to be a chart, just a visual aspect. A picture really does paint a thousand words. And like, I think when you are explaining a concept to someone. If you start almost with the visual, it's so strong. And then you have, and that's the nature of how people, I guess, digest social media feeds, particularly like a LinkedIn, right? They kind of see the scroll and they see the imagery first with the headline. That's the draw. So yeah, it's a really great way to look for the inspiration is almost let the charts be the guide in that sense.

Absolutely. What I find interesting though is that obviously, you know, we're all doing the same thing. So a lot of times everyone is posting about the same topic, is showing the same chart. So the game sometimes is to find the chart related to the topic that no one has shared yet or talked about. And, you know, it takes a little bit of time to differentiate yourself a little bit. But it's loads of fun. And honestly, charts, looking at charts is just really, really cool. It's definitely more fun and easier to digest and super long text. So I'm a big fan.

My last question on this section was, I'm pretty sure you have the commitment or the self-commitment to post daily. How do you manage that in terms of— right now there's a ton of stuff to write about, a multitude of different things, but sometimes, I mean, I find it, you can be like, oh, what am I gonna— what could I put out today? Because I want it to be interesting, but can I engineer— I don't want to put out content for the sake of it. Do you ever find yourself in that conundrum?

Oh yeah, plenty of times. Um, so many times every week, pretty much. Um, you know, it's, it's cyclical. There's some weeks you're inspired, some weeks where you're less inspired, some weeks where there's headlines you can talk about, some other weeks where not. You know, sometimes things are happening in parts of the market you have no idea about, so you are less pertinent. Or in corners of the world where it's a little bit touchier and you'd not necessarily want to talk about it. But yeah, it takes a certain degree of commitment, that's for sure. Yeah, I mean, honestly speaking, yeah, how could I say this? I guess the most important thing is committing to doing it and then deciding Why are you doing? Why is it important? And where do you want to set the limits? In my case, I said, I want to post daily. I know it's stupid because sometimes you definitely have, you know, nothing to say that is super important on a specific day. Maybe you're lacking inspiration and you don't feel like it. But in my case, I was like, okay, I want to do it because if I give myself a break for one day, it's going to, you know, I think it's going to be a a death spiral where I'm going to say, okay, well, now if I skip 2 days, it doesn't matter. 3 days, it doesn't matter. And all of a sudden you're not doing it anymore because quite frankly, it's work and it's not easy. And in my case, I said, okay, let's commit 100% to it. But yeah, no, like you gotta try things. You gotta write about different stuff. You gotta talk about different topics and And you gotta commit, honestly. And, um, and some days you're gonna feel like it, sometimes you're not gonna feel like it. Just remember why you're doing, why is it important to you, and, uh, and the rest will take care of itself. I'm not really answering the question directly again, but, uh, there's no magic formula here either, quite frankly. What about you? I mean, you tell me, because you also post, uh, pretty much every day, no? Well, I think it's almost every day.

Yeah, such as, uh, the, I guess the age-old sports analogies and so on. It's like you're only ever as good as your worst day. And I think when you're, you know, can you have a creative spark when it's not a good day in terms of the content you're looking at? Like, that's the true marker, I think, of when you're leveling up. Because it's easy to write good stuff when there's lots of stuff happening. Like, yeah, if you— that's not a definition of whether you're good. It's when it's quiet and everyone's struggling. The best should then rise at that point. And that all comes from exactly, I think, as you said, like you get the reps, but developing any muscle, you got to work out, it's got to be consistent. And so, yeah, absolutely.

And there's different types of content, right? Like there's, um, so when I think about, about, you know, the stuff I create, there's two categories. There's high decay and low decay type of information. So high decay is market headlines, uh, where I talk about levels and where I know that if someone reads this tomorrow, it's probably going to be almost obsolete by then. While slow decay stuff that, you know, doesn't lose value at all over time. Um, so it can be content like, yeah, educational materials or, uh, career tips. It's going to be valid today and it's going to be valid in a month, right? And And I guess the cool thing of the sector we operate in is that we can tap into both because there's always headlines. You can always talk about a level in finance like yields, exchange rates, you name it, valuations. There's always a number. You run the risk of becoming obsolete faster, but at least you have an enormous source of information that you can tap into. So you combine a bit of those and whenever you don't have interesting low decay touchpoints to communicate, then you go into low DK type of information and there you can share personal stories, you can share documents, PDFs to learn about stuff. You can learn story, you can write about, sorry, stories about legendary finance figures. There's, you know, like many different things you can try. And I guess the beauty, and if I have to give one piece of advice to the listeners is Don't stick to just one piece of, of one type of content. Like when I started, uh, it was like 3 years ago on LinkedIn specifically, like I was only posting very high VK type of information on fixed income. And then I realized, yeah, but people, they want to know you for something specifically, but they want to see more sides of you, you know, not just that. If you talk day in and day out about the 10-year US Treasury yield, they're going to be bored. So all of a sudden you do a survey, another day you do a meme, another day you write a story, another day you share a picture of yourself doing something, and then 2 or 3 days you talk about yields. And that way the algorithm also shows a little bit more love and you make yourself more interesting to the audience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a relationship. You gotta show all sides of your personality in order for someone to buy into you and therefore your content. So I think, yeah, absolutely. As you, explained. But let's move on, talk about The Blunt Dollar. And before we talk about— what I really want to know is any common threads of hints and tips and tricks that have come out of those amazing conversations. But maybe first off, what is The Blunt Dollar and why did you start it?

So The Blunt Dollar is a podcast. It's available on YouTube, Spotify, an Apple podcast where I invite people from the finance industry to talk about their journeys, their jobs, their experience over the years, and where folks tend to share tips for everyone listening. Obviously, a lot of times it's tips for the younger generations, but not necessarily. And the reason why I started the show was because talking to Talking to people outside of the industry specifically, I realized that a lot of them thought that we were all Gordon Gekos type of persons, you know, all very aggressive, very, you know, nasty kind of profiles. And the reality couldn't be more far away from the truth. Like if you work in finance, yeah, of course there's people like that, but like in every sector, I would say the vast majority of the people I've had the chance to meet over my career are incredibly nice. Generous and open-minded people. And I said, I want to do a podcast, a bit like you guys are doing, where I advocate for the finance profession, you know, like show the face of finance that I think is more truthful than what people read just at the worst of times on newspapers, such as 2008 and so on. And that's really it, honestly. It was just like a, it's a, well, it is still, I'm still doing it. A passion project. And the great thing is that people from all corners of the finance industry come from all sorts of different backgrounds, covering different asset classes and working in different types of financial institutions. And it's a lot of fun. The feedback has been good, growing slowly, of course, because, you know, the podcast game is the hardest game out there. It's very hard to to compete, especially now that everyone is doing very, very high quality stuff. But I find it very fulfilling. It's tons of fun. And yeah, and the goal is to get going. You told me, you told me once that you got to do 100 episodes before the real benefits start to kick in. And I'm aspiring towards that number, but a bit more than halfway through. There's a new episode coming out every Tuesday. So Hopefully by the end of the year, I'll get there.

Yeah. And we'll drop the show, the link in the notes to this episode. So 100%, definitely check that out. One of the things I was going to ask you then was having done those almost 50+ guests, then even though they're quite different and unique in their journeys and stories and seniority, is there any commonalities that you've observed in those conversations that could be beneficial for people in their professional lives, do you think, that's led to their successes?

Yeah, I've seen two commonalities. One is something they showed me without making it on purpose, and the other one is an answer to a question that I always ask. So the first thing is something I noticed is that they're all pretty passionate about what they're doing. I guess, you know, no one wants to go to a podcast to to sound sad and depressed. So usually the people that, you know, come to the show are people that are genuinely interested in their jobs and their life and what they're doing. And yeah, I think that's amazing because it's pretty contagious, right? Like when you're surrounded by people that are passionate about what they're doing, you know, they make everyone around them better and and it's just a pleasure to work with. And a lot of times you notice that some people, you know, deliver more, get more things done. Some teams are more productive than others, and it has to do with the fact that, you know, there's this kind of profiles within those teams that they have fun while they're working, and it's very hard to compete against that. And it's also something that is genuinely hard to fake. You can fake it for a bit, but not over the long term. So people that are genuinely passionate about their job and they are in a job that is aligned with their interests tend to do very well over the long term. So that's the one commonality. The second one is the answer to the question, what would your advice be for anyone listening to the show to have a successful career? And I think like three-fourths of the people at least have told me the same thing. And it has to do a little bit with what I just said, be passionate, but also be curious. It was interesting because I was kind of expecting people to say that, but not so many. Like curiosity keeps coming up. And I realized that, yeah, they're absolutely right. One of the best ways to to grow and become a better professional is to have a curious and humble mindset. You know, getting a state of mind where you're continuously trying to learn to become a better professional and hopefully a better person too. And yeah, a lot of people in the show told me that, especially the most senior profiles that I had, they really emphasized that, the curiosity. The curiosity factor and not being scared of getting out there, of asking questions and just soak as much information as possible because it compounds, right? Like sometimes you feel you're not advancing, but if you learn 1% every day, after 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, I can guarantee that you'll be in a much better place than where you are today.

Yeah, and I can definitely connect the dots because I talked to the employers with the early careers hirings in mind. So when you say the senior people really value curiosity, it's always interesting because when I talk to those students at university, often they'll think they need a really high level of technical proficiency, where in actuality, it's like, well, why would we expect them to have all of that knowledge when they've never really worked other than perhaps an internship for a few weeks? So what is it that the senior people are looking for? They're looking for these underlying markers of future potential. If you're curious, then it means that you've got this inbuilt behavior, which will accelerate your ability to learn over time. And that's one of the things we hear more now than ever because of the AI disruption with hiring, where everyone looks amazing, basically, particularly at a grad level, because the applications, the CVs, they're all amazing because they all look the same. They've all been AI-assisted, let's say. But then actually when you meet and have that face-to-face engagement, it's really, can you demonstrate that curiosity, that quest to want to question things and learn? So yeah, absolutely. It's interesting how you're having those conversations in a totally different almost context and they absolutely line up with what I'm hearing as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And especially, I mean, When we talk about AI, right? And the challenge, the phenomenal challenge that the younger generations are going to be facing, how to differentiate yourself from the machine and from the others now that everyone is using these algorithms and so on. And I don't have the answer. It's something that I think a lot about, but for sure, I know that those that are curious, that roll up their sleeves, that put in the reps and try to understand how these tools work and try to learn how to use them, uh, will have a bigger chance of, um, of surviving, you know, what's, uh, the tsunami that is coming. I'm sure we're going to be talking about that later, but, um, but yeah, so be curious, be passionate, and don't be scared to try things.

Is there any final practical points that you managed to get out of some of the people you've spoken to, like a mental model or an approach to the working day or a project? So something that people might be able to take away. I remember one of your colleagues kindly came on our show and she was talking about the circles of influence and how you can, in order to manage your mental state and positivity about, well, what is it that you can control and worrying about that because you can pull certain levers and determine certain outcomes, but too many people get distracted by what's out of their control and that can impede their Progress. Was there anything similar that you've heard that you've thought, oh wow, actually, yeah, I'm gonna give that a go?

Yeah. One that I liked was the postmortem analysis. 'Cause a lot of times we try to, you know, analyze a situation where there's very, a very large amount of moving variables and, and it's really hard to, to take a decision. You're not really sure whether you're making the, the right or the wrong choice and so on and so forth. I feel something that helps like really to put things into perspective more than anything is this post-mortem analysis, which is once the whole thing is said and done and you've executed it, like rather than just moving on with your life, sit down and try to understand what happened and spending a little bit of time just looking at the situation maybe from different angles. Now you can even ask AI to help you with that. Is incredibly valuable because at the end of the day, the reason why I like this framework is that you get something tangible at some hypotheses that you can test for the next time you face a similar situation, right? Like, this is very typical of traders. Like, after, you know, they've done a trade, they're like, okay, what went right and what went wrong? But I think it, you know, and they journal all of it and so that they can, structure the thinking process and go back to it. But I think it applies to pretty much everyone, not necessarily just traders. And also the reason why I like it is not only to try to improve myself, but also to think and reflect about more philosophical questions, which sometimes we tend to disregard, but things like, was it worth it? Would I do it again? That kind of stuff. And just sitting down, doing the postmortem and reflecting on it in this world where, as we were saying at the beginning, we're continuously bombarded by information and we almost have no time to breathe. It definitely helps a lot to grow as a professional and again, as a person.

Yeah, it's so interesting in many ways. Like if you were a performer, like a music artist or a sportsman, You would review your performance and look for ways in which you can enhance and improve for the future. And yet in our working lives, we seem to do that very rarely because we're just doing our jobs. So I think that's such a good piece of advice.

The hamster wheel.

I didn't want to say it, but you said it.

But I saw that you were doing that with your hands.

Well, if you're watching the video, I've got the treadmill out and So one thing I have seen a lot is I know you have a very close relationship with the CFA. You're a big ambassador of them, and a lot of young people are often told to do a variety of different things. You know, you should do the CFA, you should learn to code, you should try and obtain some soft skills, all these different things. Do you have any take on an order of priority or a way to try and build that in, in a way that's, I guess, can be digested. It doesn't feel overwhelming.

For the CFA program specifically, or the skills, uh, that I think one should—

skills in general, but I'd love— I know you know the CFA intimately, so I'd love to get an insight into that as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so maybe starting with the CFA, um, yeah, absolutely. I've been, I've been doing a bunch of initiatives with them because I feel our mission is, is very aligned, uh, As I was saying, I'm trying to advocate for the finance profession with my show and that's exactly what they're doing. So there's very few brands I've ever done stuff with, but they are the one, like honestly, that I like to talk to and with whom we've been doing a bunch of stuff in the past. Of course, being a CFA charterholder myself, I know well the value they add into this world and big fan, so that makes it easier. But regarding the program itself, obviously, you know, incredibly challenging. Now there's an array of certificates, but I'm going to talk about the quintessential CFHRO holder program with the 3 levels, the 300 hours of study per level that everyone talks about and all that. Tips, really, I mean, First of all, try to do it as fast as you can for two reasons. One, um, it's going to help you a lot in the early stages of your career, uh, because the CFA takes you from 0 to 100, right? Like, you're going to start with things like, um, what is an equity, and you're going to end up calculating by hand, uh, interest rate derivatives and things like that. So it's really like that kind of program. And, um, and it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. Um, but you learn a lot. And when you're starting a career, you never know when you're going to finish. But if you get the CFA early on, even if you don't remember everything by heart, because it's impossible, there's so much content in there that no one can humanly know all of it, uh, by heart all the time. It's in some part of your brain and Hence, whenever someone asks you about something, you know that you've studied it at some point, you know where to look for the information, and you know that that information is going to be reliable and very high quality. Because when you find things in YouTube and Google and so on, sometimes you find amazing things, but sometimes you can find stuff that is plainly wrong. And to have like a universal source of truth, I think it's very, very handy. So you learn a lot. And the second thing is time, right? Like, I recommend to do it as soon as possible because maybe, I mean, this is obviously not the case for everyone, but some people start families a bit later in their lives. And once you have kids and you start not sleeping at night, I can guarantee you that it's a lot harder to to pass the exam. Um, so my recommendation is to try to do this, um, as fast as possible. There's many ways of doing it. There's people that just use the official materials. There's people that use, uh, study prep providers. Like in my case, I used one of them that was called Fraser, um, at the time. I'm not being paid for saying this. I'm, but I'm grateful because they, they did help me at the time. It was 12 years ago. So. Uh, I'm pretty sure they, they got even better since then, but, um, there are providers like that, that, that help you with questions and, and prep exams and stuff like that. So you gotta find what works for you. Some people like to go to classrooms or do study groups. In my case, I was more of a lonely rider, uh, with maybe one or two friends every now and then, uh, then studying by myself. Because I go faster than going to classrooms and all of that. But yeah, find what works for you, put in the reps, think about why it's important for you to do this because otherwise it's very likely that you're going to give up at some point along the way, given the heavy workload it represents. But every time someone asks me or that I've asked other Charterholders. Was it worth it? Uh, the answer is always yes. It's a big sacrifice, it's a lot of time. Yes, I could have done other things with those hours, but, uh, you know, investing in education pays the best interest. And if you work in finance, having the CFA is never going to play against you. At worst, people, some people, maybe you have a boss that doesn't care about it. Some people could be oblivious to it, but Um, but usually, you know, like people appreciate it. And what I like to say is that, um, of course having the CFA doesn't make you smarter by any means. It's, uh, it doesn't mean you're better than the others, but it does show one thing is that you're hardworking because you cannot get it by chance. It's impossible. Uh, secondly, you usually have some sort of idea of how markets work and you can for sure, even if you don't have the answer on the spot, go to find a good answer going to the curriculum. And only because of those two things, I think it's completely worth it.

So I'm quite curious now in regards to connecting this to your job as a fixed income advisor. A lot of people have heard you say that a few times. Maybe just a very top-line description, what is that? And I'm just interested in what's the balance between the technical component of that, because I'd imagine there's quite a lot in terms of understanding the products and so forth, as to then the human side of that. And then where does AI fit within that workflow as well?

Yeah, fantastic question. So I work as a fixed income advisor at Pictet Wealth Management, which is one of the largest wealth managers in Switzerland. And the fixed income advisor job is really cool because I like to think about it as some sort of bridge between what we call the front office, so the relationship managers and the end clients on one side, so ultra-high net worth individuals usually. And on the other side, all the knowledge and expertise we have within the bank coming from the credit analyst, the strategies, the CIO. And ourselves and, um, sitting there in between those two worlds trying to connect them. So whenever a client has a question about the asset class for advisory accounts, it lands in our desk. In private banks, there tends to be three types of clients. There's what we call discretionary managed accounts, which is the kinds that tell the bank, hey, here's some money, do what you, what you want with it or what you deem necessary according to some parameters. And I'll be back in one year and you tell me how it went, but the client doesn't want to necessarily be involved in every single decision, in every trade that is done and so forth. Then there's the opposite side of the spectrum, what we call execution-only accounts, which usually like to have very tight control of what's happening in the account. They have, you know, the assets in custody with you, but they are the ones deciding what to do. And most of the time they call you for specific services or to place orders and things like that, but they are the ones in control. And then between those two worlds, there's what we call advisory accounts, which is clients that want to receive information. They want to receive ideas. They want you to help them, but they are the ones ultimately taking the decision. So you would tell them, I would do this or I would do that. And they will say, okay, let's do this or no, let's not do it. And it's a beautiful job because half of it is very nerdy. You spend time behind Bloomberg, reading research, all those newsletters I was talking about, Excel, programming, you name it. But the other half is very salesy marketing, like, because you got to talk to a lot of people, you got to talk to clients, you got to present. You gotta talk to your colleagues to pitch ideas. And in my case, you know, I really appreciate that blend between those two worlds. And specifically speaking, what are the kind of things that you do as a fixed income advisor? Well, it ranges from the bread and butter, which is stuff like portfolio proposals, portfolio reviews. Analyzing corporate actions, analyzing new issues, sending specific bond ideas and stuff like that to the more commercial part, which is doing like morning calls where you summarize what has been happening in the markets, pitching ideas for all your colleagues on a weekly basis on your top convictions. And then of course there's all the ad hoc requests that come your way because as we said, markets are moving all the time and a lot of your day is just answering questions. Like people call you, hey, I saw this country is about to restructure their debt. What should we do? Oh wow. I mean, I just saw that central banks are changing their views regarding inflation. How is that going to impact their monetary policy and how should we adjust our portfolios accordingly? And you receive all sorts of very random questions based on what's happening in the markets. So it's really nice because you cover like a very wide scope of things and not only, you know, the breadth is huge, but also the depth a lot of times. Is big because you gotta go deep sometimes, you know, sometimes they ask you a question about a specific company and then, you know, like, hey, are they, what's happening with this company? Is the leverage ratio gonna go up this year? Why? You know, and then you got to talk to the credit analyst and do your own research and go into the financials and understand what the company is about to be able to provide an answer. And for that, you need to go deep. So it's, uh, it's lots of fun.

Makes a lot of sense now about how you're able to transition then the content onto LinkedIn so succinctly, because it, it feels like that is years of mastery of talking or looking and analyzing complex things and then probably having to unpack them in different scales of complexity for different end clients.

Oh yeah, that's, that's such a good point. I forgot to mention that because our clients have all like they have a very wide range of knowledge levels and complexity, as you were saying. So sometimes you have people that are beginner level and maybe not familiarized, not very familiarized with the asset class. I've had people in the past asking me, what's the difference of a coupon and a yield? Like basic concept like that. And then sometimes you talk to people that are maybe, you know, hedge fund managers with many more years of experience in the asset class than you, and they know the thing actually much better than yourself, and you have to find a way to really do your homework and talk to those people too. And I guess that's the beauty of the job also, like the wide array of people you talk to, and the game is trying to find a way always to deliver value to them and to service them to the best of your capabilities, meet their expectations, and hopefully even surpass them so that they're happy with you, but more importantly, so they're happy with the institution you work for and they become clients for life.

I hope that one day I can fit in that first category where I can be like, Ignacio, here's a bunch of money. I don't know what I want to do with it. I'll come back in 12 months. See you later. I'm off. Maybe one day I can earn enough to get to that place.

We'd love to have you as a client, my friend. Just give me a call after the podcast and then we'll see what we can do.

Okay. Well, final question. And this is one, I guess you said something about the post-mortem and the kind of philosophy around thinking about what you've done, how it went. I wonder if we could just extrapolate that out to you and your career so far, because a lot of the people who listen to this show are in their mid-20s. So they're kind of beyond being a graduate. They're in their early part of their career coming up to a bit more experienced. I know you've worked at Pictey now, but HSBC, BNP. I wonder if there's any— I guess the perception when you start is always about being technically brilliant, but then as you start working, because you're not really taught the other stuff at university, because that's not really their purpose. When you're in the workplace and you look back retrospectively, your career and how you've developed, the different roles, the different people you've worked with. Is there anything or any final advice that you could give to something that actually, yeah, I wasn't aware of that at the beginning, but that's been quite influential on me?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, I don't have a definite answer to that story because still trying to figure that out. Like basically, what is the skill that is going to help me be the most successful person possible. Like, honestly, I don't know, but I can definitely see, say, some of the things that have worked for me to some extent and those that I came to understand that maybe I wasn't aware of at the beginning of my journey, but that now I realize they're incredibly important. So I mean, we already talked about it, but I guess the first one is related to this curiosity that we talked about. And maybe the second derivative of that is not only be curious, but develop the capacity to learn on an ongoing basis, right? Because our industry is moving fast. Your job is going to evolve for sure. Chances are that you're not going to be doing exactly the same thing for 40 or 50 years, but you're going to be pivoting and changing teams and whatnot. And, you know, one of the most important things is to adapt, you know, it's survival of the fittest in some way. That's the theory of evolution. And you've got to find a way to enjoy that, to, You know, it's nice to be in your comfort zone, but make yourself a little bit uncomfortable all the time. Try to learn something every day. Try to talk to a new person every day or every week. Look at something that you haven't done in the past and really push the boundary as much as you can. I think that's very, very valuable because it compounds. Then Secondly, try to figure out what you like. And again, going back to the passionate thing that we talked about at the beginning, it's very hard to spend 8, 10 hours a day in an office doing something that you don't like. Life is too short to be stuck doing something that doesn't make you happy. At least that's my personal motto. If I'm gonna, you know, spend more time at the office and with my colleagues than at home with my family, I might as well be somewhere where I genuinely enjoy being, where I genuinely like the people around me, the culture, and where I have fun. And it's important for you to figure out what you like doing, what are the things that you, that are fun to you, what are your values, what are your main values, and make sure that you have a job that aligns all of those things, right? Because otherwise, as I was saying, you can fake it for some time, but things will get hard at some point and you won't be able to prevail over time. So spend a bit of time figuring that out. Be passionate, be flexible, and last but not least, just be nice to people. I think a lot of times people tend to forget that finance is, it sounds cliché, but it's all about the people. And this applies pretty much to every sector, but I think you cannot make it far away without, you know, without the help and support of others. There's only so much that you can do on your own. Plus life is always so much nicer when you're with others, right? Like, I don't know, I don't remember which movie it was, but I heard once that someone that said happiness is only real when it's shared. And I think it's true to some extent, like real happiness can only be experienced when you are with other people and hence, you know, it's a team effort. So be nice to the other people and people will be nice to you in return. I have no doubt. And you never know, you know, when you're going to need something from someone. Or when you're going to be able to help someone to make a difference, but you gotta be in that mindset of trying to help out and just, you know, be genuinely helpful. And again, that compounds and I think it's one of the most important things.

That's great advice. And yeah, absolutely. A career, careers are long. And I think when you're starting your career, you forget that. Because you're so adamant about the first few roles in the first few years. But if you make meaningful relationships early, they will certainly pay dividend later, for sure. So, look, Ignacio, it's been amazing talking to you. It's been well overdue. So great to have you share some of your thoughts and experience and insights. Two things I would like the listeners to do. Number one, find you on LinkedIn and then add you because your daily content is awesome. It's just so digestible, so useful, particularly for our community where they're in the learning phase, if you like, or the exploration phase. I think that's super useful content. And number 2, The Blunt Dollar, because there are some incredible guests there. That is, like you said earlier, the podcast game. It's hard for it to just blow up. It doesn't really work like that unless you're Louis Theroux and you've got a Spotify podcast. For us mere mortals, it takes a lot of time and effort. But some of the guests that you've had are so amazing, so senior, and such open, honest insights that they share. I think it's such a—

Are you talking about yourself there or other people?

Specifically check out episode number 1. No, no, no, no, because there are some genuinely fantastic guests sharing some stuff that, you know, this is what I always say to young people is that we never had access to that when we were starting our careers. It was such a barrier between us and them, i.e., higher up, and they wouldn't, you wouldn't have access to other people in different organizations, in different roles, but, you know, hopefully yours and our platforms allow that. So yeah, long may that continue. So thank you very much, Ignacio.

No, thank you for the kind words. Listen, big fan of everything you guys are doing and your mission is absolutely phenomenal. I've been a big fan since the beginning. You know you have a friend here. If there's anything I can do to help you out, please let me know. For those of you that haven't subscribed to this podcast or that are not following Anthony, please do, because his content is even better than mine. I can guarantee that. And I wish you all the best with the show and with AmplifyMe.

All right, take care.

Thank you very much.