Half a Year In and I Feel Fine

Reflections on My First Six Months Working Abroad

Six?

SIX?!?

Have I really been here for half a year? It’s almost unbelievable to me. At some points, I feel like I just arrived yesterday. Hong Kong is still a fresh place, full of surprises, adventure, new people and new experiences. It’s still exciting. But on the other hand, I feel at home here. I have settled in, for sure. And I can see myself out here for a good chunk of the future. So half of me easily believes it’s been six months since my arrival on November 9th while another half thinks the math is wrong and I’ve only been here mere weeks.

The Star Ferry, my favorite way to get from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon

My memories of life back home are as fresh as ever, though they are twenty-six weeks in the past. I remember my first Homecoming at Villanova, when my departure was imminent, only a few weeks away. I remember a going away party in New York like it was just last night. And that final evening, frantically doing laundry and packing, all while watching the Yankees win the World Series, is still in my head. I remember that car pulling up in front of the house, I remember the three day stop-over in London, and I never will be able to forget sitting on the plane, on the runway at Heathrow, as the engines fired up and the wheels started rolling.

I suppose these events were so special and so important that I will always keep them on ice, ready to relive and recall in the blink of an eye.

Perhaps even harder for me to grasp is the fact that next week, I will celebrate the one year anniversary of my graduation from Villanova. A few days later, June 1st will similarly mark the one year anniversary of my first day of work in our New York office. Where has the time gone?

Leaving my life behind to start anew in Asia hasn’t necessarily been easy. There were days, even weeks in the beginning, when I felt very alone. Thankfully, with so much to see and do, being alone in Hong Kong isn’t the worst thing in the world. And being alone is in no way a synonym for being lonely. Once I started to make friends out here, things really began to take a turn for the better. The people who have come into my life in the past one hundred and eighty days have truly made this whole thing most worthwhile—new friends from all over the world, in Hong Kong for many different reasons.

First friends: Julian, Jurre, Becca and me on Blake Pier at Stanley

Being away from home has presented its own difficulties, especially at Christmastime. This stretch is by far the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing my mother, father and sister, and lots more time still has to pass before we have our first reunion.

But the memories of these past months are worth it, and I’ve never regretted my decision to move for a single moment. From the American Cemetery in Manila to feeding that elephant in Thailand to sampan rides in Aberdeen Harbor and endless trips on the Star Ferry, life out here has truly been an adventure. I've made friends who have touched my life, even though some of them have left Hong Kong since completing their work assignments here. But, thankfully, many of my new friends are here indefinitely, as I am. I feel that I have grown and matured in many ways in the past six months, and I’ve learned so much—not just about business but about myself and the world.

With my friend Becca, an Australian who did an internship here

Right now, I don’t even want to think about leaving Hong Kong (except for a vacation, of course). It couldn’t be further from my mind. And luckily, with my situation, who knows how long I can wait before considering the issue! I love that this is an open-ended assignment, and that I can really submerge myself in life out here without having to worry about returning home at some predetermined date. The future is a blank page, and I can’t wait to fill more of it in!

Getting Back on Track

“Don’t fall into the typical just out of college trap, which is that they love to waste time analyzing and hate to pick up the phone and build the relationships that will make them money.”

Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned! Nonetheless, I still stumbled over what is apparently a very common snare for recent graduates. That above quote came to me via an e-mail, the words of my boss in New York City. He’s a great guy who’s given me a lot of guidance since even before my first day of work last June. And he’s still just an e-mail away when I need some words of wisdom.

In addition to simply being a recent college graduate enamored with analysis, there were several factors that ‘trapped’ me into failing to build trading relationships. If I could reconstruct the advice for a new employee, I think my version would go something like this:

“Don’t fall into the typical ‘just-arrived-in-a-new-city’ trap, which is that you’ll be so preoccupied with weekend trips, after work events and new friends that you'll forget to pick up the phone to build the relationships that will make you money.”

Not only is it more grammatically correct than my boss’s advice, it also addresses key factors that most contributed to my mistakes.

You see, even before I left for London, I could tell I was getting a little stagnant at work. Worrying too much about nighttime plans, busy putting together weekend itineraries or just, perhaps, enjoying life in Hong Kong a bit too much, I saw myself getting off track and knew I had to do something about it. Little did I know that my telephone was the key to success, and that by using it more often I would see immediate results.

But maybe I had to stumble and lose my balance a little. It certainly wasn’t a hard fall, and I can say I had a very pleasant trip! Now I’m refocusing on my job with renewed passion, and (surprise, surprise) enjoying work more and more.

View of Victoria Harbour from our office in 2ifc

So now that I’m back on track at work, I’m going to attempt to get this blog back on track, as well, since its original purpose has almost completely vanished from my posts.

When I was first asked to maintain this blog, the emphasis was to be on business and starting my new career. However, it quickly turned into a record of my Asian adventures. While I can’t say that’s a bad thing, I want to make sure to keep at least some of the focus on my job out here. Of course, in the future I will continue to chronicle the more interesting aspects of life outside the office. But for now, I’m going to write a bit about my work.

At my desk in the new office, with our city view in the background

The past few weeks I have been cold calling like mad. There have been days when I’ve called 20 or more contacts all over Asia. I’ve been working my way through the countries, starting with Indonesia, then moving onto Malaysia and now focusing on Singapore. Every now and then, I try to find a more exotic number to call, like one in Fiji or Sri Lanka or even Cambodia.

Quite often its fun to make the call, even if that's hard to believe. Other times it’s painfully dreadful. It all depends on who’s on the other side. Sometimes I get lucky and speak with a very friendly and receptive trader. Other times I get a rude jerk who seems very disinterested. But worst of all is when I never actually speak to the proper person at all—getting passed around from one operator to another, to a trader who doesn’t speak English to yet another operator until we somehow arrive at the mutual conclusion that there probably was no hope from the beginning and that the call should have ended before it even started. This happens most often when I call Vietnam.

The best cold calls leave you feeling confident and on top of the world, and the worst ones aren’t really so bad. I mean, in the end it’s only a telephone call. Still, each morning I dread the thought of making that first one. Once the numbers have been dialed and the ringing starts, I am fine for the rest of the day. But I have this strange, unjustified apprehension in picking up the phone that first time each morning. It’s kind of like jumping into a cold sea—once you’re in, it’s fine, but you have to convince yourself to take the plunge. This is something I’m working on, and maybe one day I will succeed in overcoming it!

One of the unexpected joys of cold calling is—believe it or not—being put on hold, as the music rarely fails to put a smile on my face. I have to wonder who makes the executive decision of what song to play for the enjoyment of those on hold at Asian banks. I’ve heard an instrumental version of Let It Be by the Beatles, Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik played on glockenspiel and even the perennial Christmas tune What Child Is This in the middle of April! Other times I get some tacky jingle with chipper voices singing the name of the bank, or its slogan, in simple harmonies. I never thought I’d say it, but I look forward to being placed on hold every day!

Of course, before I can make a phone call, I need to find people to call. I spend a lot of time trying to find contacts, and there are countless ways to do this. Most often, I use my Bloomberg terminal to find the name of banks and traders in various countries. For example, if I enter the word “trader” in the search box, I get a list of literally hundreds of thousands of traders all over the world, most with contact phone numbers. I can then distill that list by limiting the results to people in the Asia-Pacific region.

My Bloomberg screens, which, among other things, help me find contacts throughout Asia.

Even more specifically, I can narrow the list to people working in Hong Kong, or the Philippines or South Korea. If I have a more specific contact in mind, I can search for the name of a particular bank and then view the names and phone numbers of its employees. Each person has a Bloomberg profile, and if it seems promising, I will print it out and add it to my growing stack of future cold calls

Sometimes just walking down the street I see an ATM or branch of a bank I haven’t heard of, and by searching for that bank, I can find other names. This was the case when I went to Kuala Lumpur a few weekends ago. As I walked around town I saw scores of unfamiliar banks and noted the names. The next week at work, I searched for contacts at those banks, several of which lead to successful calls.

I can even use Facebook to help me find contacts. Since traders are friends with other traders, if I can get onto the page of a potential cold call, I can also view his or her friends. I can then search for them on Bloomberg to find out whether they are an appropriate contact to pursue.

I have a little speech written out and in the beginning I kept it open on my screen during every call. It isn’t really good to ‘recite’ my information lecture-style, so I have to make it sound more spontaneous. Still, there is information I need to include, so it’s never a bad idea to have that document nearby when I make a phone call. I pick a profile out of the collection, make sure there’s a smile on my face and then dial away.

As the call proceeds I make little notes on the page, writing down names, pronunciations, other phone numbers, e-mail addresses and types of securities traded. During the call, I also try to send the person a quick Bloomberg message, because seeing the message come through while on the phone with me is a good way to ensure they will remember me. And when the call is over, I write a few lines at the bottom of the page detailing the call, the next steps to take and anything else that is necessary.

The notes at the bottom help me when I go through the pile later on. Usually it simply has the date I called, the name of the person with whom I spoke and how receptive that person was, along with an indication that I sent over our company profile and financial data or added the person to my price distribution list that gets sent out to all of my customers.

The notes make it easier for me to remember the conversation I initially had, and sometimes provide an unintended laugh as I re-read what I wrote. One of my first calls to a bank in Indonesia resulted in the following note: “Called on 11/19… nobody seems to know what’s going on…” Last week, I wrote that a contact at one bank in Malaysia “will not be trading USD debt for a couple of years so call back in May 2012…”

The city view from the other side of the office

As an inter-dealer broker in the emerging Asian credit markets, there is a ton of business to be done. But, as my boss implied with his quote, it’s strongly based on the relationships you can make with traders. So while I’ll continue to make the calls to new accounts, I can’t forget to keep in touch with the accounts I’ve already called. Hopefully many of these relationships will start to grow.

The way a broker like me makes money is quite simple. I have to put together trades between buyers and sellers. In the morning, Trader A calls me and says he wants to sell a certain security, say the Indonesian government bond maturing in 2015, at a certain price, say $114.00.

I then use Bloomberg and the telephone to contact other traders and hope to find one who’s interested in buying that same bond. When I find one, he will tell me how much he is willing to pay, in this case let’s say $113.00.

Now that I have two interested parties, I have to keep going back to each of them, as the seller lowers his offer and the buyer raises his bid. Hopefully this continues until a price is agreed upon, such as $113.50. For each bond traded, I would make a commission. Considering millions of bonds can trade each time, working hard to put together the trade can really be worth the effort.

However, if a price is not agreed upon (say the seller will not sell for less than $113.75 and the buyer will not pay more than $113.25), I will try to make more phone calls and find another interested buyer or seller who can step in and get a trade done.

At the end of the month, my commissions are totaled and I get half, with the company taking the other half. In this respect there is no limit to how much money one can earn in a month. Realistically, getting started takes time, so I am fortunate to have a safety net base salary. It’s the best of both worlds: there is no limit to how much I can make, but I am guaranteed a minimum amount regardless.

As I said, now that I’m back on track again, I’m really enjoying work. While I’ve always liked the job, these past few weeks have been even more rewarding, interesting and satisfying than ever before—proof positive that I’ve found my way back to the right path. It's hard to believe it's been almost a full year since starting this job, and almost six full months since I arrived in Hong Kong. It's been a wonderful and exciting journey, and it's still only the beginning!