My Journey in Financial Markets:
Hi,
My name is K Anant Rao and am a financial market professional for past 18+ years now. For 14-15 years, I was gainfully employed in diverse roles as Technical Analyst and/or Derivative Strategist in equity brokerage firms and later graduated
Hi,
My name is K Anant Rao and am a financial market professional for past 18+ years now. For 14-15 years, I was gainfully employed in diverse roles as Technical Analyst and/or Derivative Strategist in equity brokerage firms and later graduated
to become head of institutional equity sales trading and alternative research. Though I began my journey in Retail Broking but spent 80-90% of my professional career servicing institutional investors consisting of both domestic and foreign.
Be it pension fund, hedge fund, quant fund, long only fund, long short fund, arbitrage fund, value fund or growth fund, I was fortunate to have serviced them, sometimes in derivatives or sometimes in equities or in some cases both, in my career.
Servicing institutional investors proved to be a challenge which I relished in my professional career. They can be very demanding, very accommodating and/or very rude and sometimes all, at the same time. But one thing stands out among most of the institutional investors,
they start to like you once, they are sure about your sincerity, determination and above all integrity towards your profession. There is special liking for those who exhibit courage and conviction to take bold stance on a particular stock or market or asset class.
They don't need ideas daily but do demand regular follow up of ideas given. There is little or zero tolerance for casual approach towards servicing. So there were enough instances where i learnt this lesson in a hard way with institutional investors.
It is difficult to get attention of an institutional investor,even more difficult to manage and grow the relationship and extremely challenging to carry it to the next employer.
It's like actors getting typecasted, Technical Analysts can also get typecasted easily and that can be dangerous for one's growth. Example, if an actor gets noticed for a good role as a villain, then all the subsequent roles offered are typically of a villain.
Similarly, if an actor gives a brilliant performance in the role of a cop, then the subsequent roles offered will majorly be of a cop. Now if a TA excels in identifying short term trend reversal, then his clients will seek for the same from him.
If the TA is good with mid and small cap stock ideas, the client will tend to only seek the same from him, if the TA is good at calling a major market reversal, then institutional investors only expect him to call major market reversal.
But the other abilities of TA remain untested or unchallenged or even unutilized in such scenarios and gradually those skills perish with time.I do agree that we can't be master of all but we can certainly strive to improve over time with practice.
Being TA at institutional equities can be painful especially in a declining markets. Clients could avoid meeting you if you are known for your hawkish views especially by Long only funds, or, clients could also want to avoid meeting if he's bearish & you happen to be bullish.
Lastly , in a down trending markets , client may only meet you if you have a magic wand which will tell when and where the markets will turn plus what would be the cause (which a TA is never able to tell).
Or else, simply, be someone, who wishes to give support and resistance to institutional investor at their beck and call and not any trend analysis. In my small journey, few clients became friends for lifetime, inspite of huge differences of opinion ie 7/10 times on market
but our bond only improved with time. I can't thank them enough for their contribution in my growth as a TA over the years. Their constant endeavour to extract the most out of me led to tremendous improvement in my analysis especially in asset classes like fixed income, currency
and commodities which are usually out of the syllabus for an TA in equities. Most significant contribution was the improvement in my concepts and learning on the "Inter-Market Analysis" front for which i would be indebted forever.
Today, am happy running my small firm "Kurtosis Analytics & Advisors" @Kurtosis_IN, providing affordable investment advisory services to non-institutional clients & trying to make a difference to them by bringing in values and ethos learnt from servicing institutional investors
plus combining them with the discipline of a TA. We conduct paid webinars on sectors especially for those wish to learn about the way we conduct our research yet want to take their decisions on their own.
We would be happy to be of service to anyone who wishes to invest in equities either directly or through the MF route and would seek to earn the trust of our investors by delivering consistent performance over time.
We can be reached at +91 97699 24095 on whatsapp/telegram and/or alternatively you can write to us on ria@kurtosis.in or simply follow our twitter handles @KAnantrao and @Kurtosis_IN.
