Liz Ann Sonders, Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, joined TheStreet to discuss the evolving landscape of working in Wall Street, her advice to those just starting out, as well as her biggest career risks.
Full Video Transcript Below:
SARA SILVERSTEIN: And things have changed so much since you started working in finance. What advice do you have for people who are coming in now. Since I think like, you know, if you were getting started now, what would you do differently or what advice do you have?
LIZ ANN SONDERS: Well, I think the opportunities are extraordinary and in particular maybe for women. When I started in 1986, it was much more and I started in New York, you know, working at a Wall Street firm. And know, the original movie Wall Street was, you know, it was stretched a bit for the benefit of you know, the movies. But it wasn’t all that stretched relative to the kind of old boys network and boiler room kind of stuff. I was very fortunate to be at a firm that that, you know, believed in diversity and promoting women. But I think opportunities in general are extraordinary right now. And also for women. I think there’s been an interesting shift to within this category of big Wall Street firms away from just day to day trading and and, you know, stock picking to wealth management and financial planning. And in that space, the world of wealth managers and registered investment advisors, independent asset management firms not to mention the wealth management divisions within many of the larger organizations. I think there’s such a huge opportunity there because in the case of the individual, you know, managers, the RIA space, registered investment advisors, it’s really a first generation business.
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And one of the things we’re working with the advisors on our platform is around succession planning. And any time you have an industry that is a first generation industry that’s been around now for a while, the opportunities associated with that planning for the next generation I think provides great opportunities. And I continue to think that Wall Street gets painted with a negative brush too often. And that’s one of the conversations I often have with young people who are considering entering into this business is, I think, the I think it’s a great business and it does get painted with, I think, an erroneous brush or too broadly. And I think and by the way, it’s also fun. And the thing I like most about what I do specifically, but I talk to a lot of people in this industry that agree with me is there’s almost no monotony. Every single day you you wake up and there’s something new. In my case, to write about, to talk about, to think about. And I find that exciting.
SARA SILVERSTEIN: What is the biggest risk you’ve taken in your career?
LIZ ANN SONDERS: So it was really shifting from my guess, it was my first 15 years in the business and I’ve been doing this for 38 years. I was a portfolio manager. I was a bottom up stock picker. I didn’t enjoy that at all. I particularly didn’t enjoy the period from the mid to late 90s when at the time I worked for a single mandate, aggressive, large cap growth firm and I didn’t like being pigeonholed in that kind of mandate. I was always more fascinated by top down macro analysis, figuring out the big picture and sentiment trends and monetary policy and its impact on the economy and markets. So when I joined Schwab via its acquisition of U.S. trust and was offered the opportunity to take on this role, which had not existed before at Schwab, they gave me a lot of rope and a lot of freedom to create the role in the, you know, vision of Schwab and what makes us unique relative to a lot of the traditional Wall Street firms, because we have individual investors and I think that audience is very different from institutional investors. And it’s why we don’t do short term market timing and year end price targets. But, you know, taking on that role and not having somebody in the role before to emulate, I think was probably the biggest risk. But I’ve know, I’ve been thrilled at the ride so far.
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