ive been to italy, ive been to france, i speak french, ive been to spain, ive been to south america, ive been to kenya, ive been to china, i backpacked across europe, i prefer tea to coffee, ive been to greece, i love greek food, im a foodie, im always on the lookout for a great little place to get breakfast, sometimes i go to barnes and noble and lose track of the time, i love my mackbook, but i also love my mackbook pro - because it has the word pro on it, the matrix and inception are the first movies in the last 10 years that made me really think, to bend the spoon you have to realize that there is no spoon, oh and one more thing - if you dont know the difference between your and youre - youre and your - then youre a fuckin idiot get the fuck off of my facebook wall

 
Controversial

Hardest take (and I believe this sincerely): all investment bankers are idiots. They missed out on their entire lives.

-Grinded since high school to get into top colleges -Spent all their time networking, getting good grades, joining nonsense finance clubs, doing "coffee chats," connecting and cold-emailing on LinkedIn -Work 70-120 hours/week, including weekends -Unfulfilling work (formatting slides) -Make so much money but are always in the office and can't spend it

When really, you could have gone to Penn State University and joined the Nittany Lion fund and gotten a job at a BB IBD like everyone there does lmao

 

Wait you said that all investment bankers are idiots, as they work too hard doing boring shit for money they cant spend, so they should have just joined the Nittany Lion fund and become investment bankers?

Moving past the failed logic, I didn't do IB for the reasons you said. If the goal is to get to "fulfilling work" ASAP, the recommended paths are typically IB/Consulting/ and (to a lesser extent) Big 4. You'll run into all the same unfulfilling long hours at all of them. If you think formatting powerpoints sounds shitty, just wait until you are tying out a 10k at 3am.

 

The easy way in:

  • Parents bribe you into a top school
  • Study the absolutely easiest major you can find
  • Take on some lax club positions, and play some correct sport - hopefully something you've been doing since 12-13 (golf for example)
  • Use your dads network to land coffee-fetching summer jobs at boutiques, the earlier the better.
  • Use all this accumulate preftige to land your first legit IBD summer analyst job. Hell, maybe your pop knows senior folks at the firms, and can further pull some strings for you.
  • Pay people to do your homework, take your tests, and whatnot. Graduate with stellar grades.
  • Don't be a complete fucking dolt at the interviews
 

Maybe I'm just terribly uninformed (likely) but I have no idea what you mean by "the easy way."

Penn State isn't a great school and I hear that getting into the Lion Fund is very tough, making that "easy" course of action quite difficult. If it were so easy to land a spot in a BB through Penn State then surely everyone would do that.

 

Story time: Theres a student committee at my university that manages part of the schools endowment by investing it. Every few years part of the gains are liquidated and distributed to other campus organizations.
I interviewed for the committee a few years ago (portfolio manager in the committee now) and the interview was with the committee's CIO and three portfolio managers. The first few questions were standard qualitative interview questions (strengths, weaknesses, resume walkthrough, etc.). Then we had a few easy technical questions ("say depreciation increases $10, how would this affect each of the financial statements?"). After that, I had to pitch a stock (I pitched Visa), and the interview seemed like it was wrapping up.

Then the CIO goes "Alright cube44, this is our most important question yet. Is a hot dog a sandwich?"

Me: "hahahaha you had me nervous for a second there... uhh I'm gonna say no."

CIO: "Why? This isn't some joke throwaway question. We genuinely want you to take a second and think this through. Do you seriously think we'd waste our time asking kids like you unimportant questions? Give us a real answer."

Me: "Uhh okay. I'm going to say its not a sandwich because the bun connects at the bottom and typically sandwich buns don't connect."

Portfolio Manager 1: "Dude, submarine sandwich buns usually connect. Are seriously going to sit here with a straight face and tell me subs aren't sandwiches? We don't like it when people try to waste our time."

At this point I was essentially shitting myself because these guys were fairly intimidating and were actually keeping straight faces the entire time. One of the portfolio managers was furiously scribbling down notes in a notebook and shaking his head disappointedly.

I ended up settling on the explanation that a hot dog is not a sandwich purely because of our societal understanding of the word "sandwich". They asked a few more hard joke questions after that and I got a spot in the committee.

 

This is the only way people that believe in evolution can explain why we do not also live by the rules of nature and the survival of the fittest: at some point it became a survival method to coddle the weak.

 
George_Banker:
This is the only way people that believe in evolution can explain why we do not also live by the rules of nature and the survival of the fittest: at some point it became a survival method to coddle the weak.

Hard Take2: Feminists will reap the pain of their designs; if men did not fear being alone, that wall would hit them faster and harder.

 

Bitcoin/crypto is worthless and the only reason that its kept around is so CORRUPT politicians like Hillary Clinton can be paid anonymously.

(A co-worker's take, not mine)

 

IB keeps its rep because no one will admit they slaved away their undergrad earning perfect grades to simply slave away at an IB as a glorified assistant. Therefore IBD analysts make it sound "baller" with how much money they make and how they are closing deals. In reality, they are powerpoint b!tchboys (aka the deck and CIM) who make pretty presentations to the sellers of businesses. Modeling is part of the job, but not a huge part. Despite what you learn in the CFA, valuation does not equal price. Some of you were bashing me for my comp valuation I was attempting awhile ago and how I should use free cash flows. Look, we are looking to buy a company at the lowest price possible and justify it by comps in the market, not do a DCF valuation and pay what the company is hypothetically worth 10 years from now.

IB is like spring break. Have any of you ever went for one? Every year tons of horny frat boys go South to places like Cancun, South Padre and Miami to party and hook up every night with ease like MTV made it out to be. I am here to tell you that it was all a ruse. When I went on spring break, it was easily 10 to 15 guys per girl, and most girls kept close to their crew since they know what our agenda was. The truth was far from what MTV made it out to be. However, no guy was going to admit they blew $2000 on a spring break that was shittier than the run of the mill weekend in their college town; so they lie and say it was crazier than a GGW gang bang.

There you have it folks. The cat is out of the bag.

 

Why did you copy and paste your second paragraph from an old post

Unless you were the one that originally posted it, I don't remember

 
champagnepaki:
Why did you copy and paste your second paragraph from an old post

Unless you were the one that originally posted it, I don't remember

that's my post from the Piper thread.

 

Protip: If you hear from a bunch of average dudes that a certain party spot is awesome, AVOID IT. Miami can be good but you NEED to go to the top clubs. Very much like Vegas in that respect. Vegas is awesome if you're at Omnia or Marquee. I love Vegas but that's only about 5% of Vegas. You'd have the same shitty experience if you went to the shit tier hotel bars where the promoters promise cheap drinks. If you're a dude and a promoter is promising you cheap anything, you're in the wrong spot. You couldn't pay me to stay at the New York New York or

The harder to get into, the better the place usually is. This is true with parties and also true with life. Every random dude can go to the beach in Cancun. If you were a hot girl, would you go there, knowing that?

If you were a baller CEO, would you go to the random networking event on Meetup.com, or would you go to an elite country club? Exact same thing with parties and hot girls.

 

There are hot girls in college sororities who go to run down frat houses, party all the time, and graduate with a $40,000 a year substitute teacher job, and then go to cheap bars for the rest of their lives and Cancun on spring break.

There are hot women everywhere. Wealthy women, well, not so much.

 

you wanna go dark? let's do it

  1. no one will remember you in 100 years unless you become a serial killer or President
  2. your life doesn't really matter, you're one out of 7.5 billion on a planet with 4.5 billion years of history (and our planet is totally insignificant)
  3. chasing money will never make you happy
  4. if you post on instagram more than monthly, you're insecure and likely depressed
  5. your memes aren't funny or clever, so stop it
 

Heh, I like this.

To expand - nothing matters and we grasp desperately, futilely, for meaning and a greater purpose. The heights of joy and depths of pain we feel are illusory, because our personal experiences are just our own perceptions. Look closer and think harder about the few times that you felt were truly meaningful and realize that they're objectively fleeting and dull.

Understand that your only options are ignorance of your own (and everyone's else's) pitiful state or a Sisyphean struggle.


Real talk here. This is actually all fine; so long as you have an easy ignorance switch you can flip at will, you can still be blissfully happy. Actually, for most people, I think that switch is stuck on on until something traumatic happens. It's probably better this way.

 
DickFuld:
Every single person that you have ever cared about will be dead soon.

Best statement not to say when the plane is taking off.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Almosttoolate:
3. Jordan Peterson is a charlatan.

Correct. A grown man telling other grown men to make their beds.

"I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people."
 

Most people are idiots and new generations are getting dumber.

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

i like V10-V12 engine supercars. Issue is a lot of euro countries are headed in the direction of banning the production of gasoline engine cars all together in favor of electric cars. I had no issue with electric cars; but legislation that is intending to kill gasoline powered cars is troublesome.

thots & prayers
 

A correctly prepared well-done steak is better than medium rare

"Look, you're my best friend, so don't take this the wrong way. In twenty years, if you're still livin' here, comin' over to my house to watch the Patriots games, still workin' construction, I'll fuckin' kill you. That's not a threat, that's a fact.
 

Interesting take. Now when u say 'medium rare' are u talking about the scientific definition of 125-135 degrees or how it is prepared at a restaurant/steakhouse? Just came across an article recently talking about how steakhouses are purposely undercooking steaks because of price of meat and other factors. For them, it makes sense as no product is lost undercooking and sending it back to further cook it, where as when they overcook a steak, theres no -uncooking it and the entire product is lost.

 
"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

James Harden is the most talented player in team sports

Edit: this didn't age well

New hardest takes: -Kawhi is the most underrated player in team sports -Lebron will win a championship with LA

WSO Content & Social Media. Follow us: Linkedin, IG, Facebook, Twitter.
 

Hard take: the kids AREN'T getting softer. Despite how the media keeps blabbering about millennial this, millennial that, I don't buy it. I view the "everyone's a winner" and the more militant politically correct stuff as old fashioned baby boomer stuff that's on it's way out. History goes in cycles, and we're at one extreme end of the pendulum now, and it's about to swing back to the other direction. My evidence for this, look at how Jordan Peterson basically rose from complete obscurity after just posting a couple lectures on YouTube. Or, look at the rise of various online men's communities (if you know, you know. Allz I'm saying).

 

its all bs, the boomers just dont want to fall out of relevance so they keep bringing up how they are so much better than the younger generation even though they barely know how to send an email.

 

Incels, Proud Boys, men's rights activists, and NoFappers are the softest people on the fucking planet.  Am I missing anything?

So is Jordan Peterson.  Imagine having a pseudo father figure to tell a bunch of losers to clean their room and reject postmodernism

 

I had a take in a 'hot takes' group on fb where I said that it's false to assume that "white people" have no taste when most of the top chefs in the world (by Michelin stars or whatever) are of Caucasian origin. Not that they are better per se, but that the original assumption about them having no taste is wrong imo. They kicked me out for it.

Quant (ˈkwänt) n: An expert, someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
 

The James Bond films lost their touch after Daniel Craig came on board. I know they're trying to be more 'modern', 'down to earth', etc all that, but that's not what Bond is about. I love the silly over the top adventures of Connery/Moore/Brosnan/Dalton/Lazenby. The new Bond films (Casino Royale onwards), albeit decent thrillers, are not what I want to see in a Bond film.

 

Also, religion should *at best* be used as a moral guideline to live your life. If you believe the ancient fiction that happens in religious texts, you're a moron.

edit: Also, this comes from one that was baptized and confirmed.

 
[Comment removed by mod team]
 

NDAs are useless, unenforceable, a waste of time, and only exist to let lawyers bill hours.

"I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people."
 

dude i read this 4x i have no idea what you're saying i eat butthole 4 years into marriage tho

heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

Modern banking (with its origins with the Medicis and with John Law and the French) undergirds all of advanced human civilization. Alexander Hamilton is the most important American founding father (even more important than George Washington) because he understood this. People who don't understand the basics of banking, finance, and supply and demand are woefully uneducated regardless of the degree and institution on their resume, which is why you have a generation of people who are ostensibly the most "educated" who hate banks and capitalism and are obsessed with their delusions about Marxism.

London, New York, and Hong Kong enjoy outsized wealth and influence because, despite what people FEEL, finance is the beating heart of modern civilization and the market, free of coercion, intuitively understands that fact.

Array
 
C.R.E. Shervin:
You realize John Law almost single-handedly caused the French Revolution by creating a currency bubble and a stock bubble similar to the South Sea Company

I do, and yet his ideas ultimately succeeded and are standard for virtually every successful nation today. He and the French were just too far ahead of their time as they didn’t understand how to manage their ideas.

Array
 
anonmises:
Thoughts of fractional reserve banking?

Umm, I think it makes a lot of sense. Trial and error showed us its short-comings and federal insurance and oversight largely eliminated bank runs and cash shortages.

That's my point about John Law and the French. They did not have hundreds of years of trial and error but were largely headed down the right path; however, they had to suffer the consequences for being first movers.

Array
 

Philadelphia is a vastly underrated city.

Pennsylvania has the best ice cream out of all 50 states

I’m a fun guy. Obviously I love the game of basketball. I mean there’s more questions you have to ask me in order for me to tell you about myself. I'm not just gonna give you a whole spill... I mean, I don't even know where you're sitting at
 

I'll piggyback. Portland is fucking garbage. Trash heap of a city

heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

I'm on board with PA being underrated overall. I spent a lot of time over the years in Pitt, Philly, and the Lehigh Valley, and think all three are very nice in their own way.

Dayman?
 
  1. People with beards are just people without beards who haven't shaved in a while.

  2. People who drive slow in the left lane should not be allowed to procreate.

  3. Donald Trump is the same as every other President of the modern era, he just isn't articulate enough to lie and make you feel better about yourself that he's your President.

"Who am I? I'm the guy that does his job. You must be the other guy."
 

Something is fundamentally wrong with you if you drive slow in the left lane.

Quant (ˈkwänt) n: An expert, someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
 
MonkeyWrench:
1. People with beards are just people without beards who haven't shaved in a while.
  1. Donald Trump is the same as every other President of the modern era, he just isn't articulate enough to lie and make you feel better about yourself that he's your President.

The oppressive liberal in me wants to fight you for that last one, but the realist in me has to acknowledge how powerfully correct it is.

I disagree with the first one, there is a difference between a person who intentionally grows a beard versus someone who doesn't shave. Its like comparing someone is naturally gifted versus someone with talent who grids. Effort, my dear brethren. Quality beards tell no lies

 

Eos sed incidunt repellendus nihil. Dolorem eos temporibus velit possimus iste sit voluptatem.

 

Earum quidem aliquid quia quia similique veritatis. Optio est non earum molestiae veritatis quae inventore. Enim rerum dolores deserunt possimus et laudantium quia vel. Eum vel error amet quos blanditiis. Maiores perferendis qui fugiat soluta sunt vitae repellendus. Itaque error fugiat quas minus. Voluptatem qui ullam quod odio.

Necessitatibus aspernatur voluptatem necessitatibus laborum dolores. Rem est consectetur nostrum nostrum. Maiores dignissimos molestias voluptas blanditiis et quae amet saepe. Ut id aut ut occaecati.

 

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Sit odit necessitatibus eveniet. Eveniet quia rerum tempora repudiandae sit consequatur. Nemo doloremque et laboriosam sit doloribus ea. Totam enim velit tempore ipsam. Temporibus dolores maiores magnam ut odit quis.

Recusandae dolores occaecati consectetur non saepe. Tenetur rerum sed nemo. Dolorum nulla sit officia et. Quo aperiam incidunt natus dignissimos. Maiores nemo qui et debitis iste.

Aliquam consequatur deleniti nulla dolor. Dolorem dignissimos eaque voluptates vitae blanditiis dolorum dolores.

Dayman?
 

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Aut velit natus odio fugit ipsum id nam. Adipisci laborum quia eaque illo qui sed.

Aliquam magnam maiores quae nobis est provident doloremque. Ut est nisi quas at. Officiis amet voluptates et ducimus est.

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

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Dolores quo doloribus reprehenderit molestiae. A ipsam vero ea est dolor cum error. Eveniet et veritatis voluptatem corporis aut asperiores sapiente. Atque eos sit inventore repudiandae ut ut. Consequatur et voluptas quibusdam rerum qui quisquam. Rerum sit quis saepe voluptatem quia provident. Est asperiores commodi ea autem eligendi ex.

Et ut non molestiae eaque. Necessitatibus ipsa nihil error minus labore. Vero omnis quaerat blanditiis corrupti at blanditiis. Et voluptatem autem quas animi rem. Quis est dolores quis eligendi maxime eius odio atque.

 

Exercitationem rerum animi nemo ipsa animi culpa. Ducimus et repellat in placeat aut adipisci. Odit molestiae officiis amet possimus quam nemo qui. Iste in laborum ea est sed ea. Facilis ducimus non reiciendis ducimus labore.

Voluptatum veniam sed reprehenderit qui. Eveniet ut adipisci hic accusantium labore. Qui commodi eaque est quis delectus. Tempora ratione nihil aut amet voluptatem. Est id incidunt explicabo dolor animi sint adipisci. Nulla soluta nihil et.

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

Distinctio expedita odit occaecati et quaerat. Suscipit fugit porro quam eaque id facere saepe.

Et praesentium illo commodi facilis omnis quisquam labore. Provident aut dolorem voluptas iure dignissimos cum voluptatibus. Laboriosam voluptas consequatur repellat eos alias consequatur.

Aut commodi itaque debitis. Inventore veritatis nam reprehenderit neque.

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