So I left my job at Morgan Stanley not to long ago becuase I just felt as though the job was too stressful, and I really had some bad impasses with my boss. Great guy, but really tough in general, and I wanted to take some time for myself. Since then I’ve been studying for my level one exam in June (So Excited !!!), and I’ve been thinking about some career paths. The top two are security analyst, and an economist. I know those are kind of broad, but I was wondering whether or not anyone has seen people using their CFA exam passage, or charter to break into the world of economics.
If you want to be an economist, CFA is not the way to go. You need to think about a PhD in economics from a top school. If you go on linkedin and look up economist, you can see their past education experience.
CFA is no way related to becoming an economist, the economics section of the CFA isnt very advanced, mostly undergrad level. At the minimum you need a master degree in economics to get any job labelled “economist”. In Canada the big 6 banks hire economists and ask for at least a masters. Centeral banks also require a masters and for senoir analyst positions a PhD.
Don’t take any offense to this as it’s possible you have some legitimate reasons, but don’t tell future employers that your previous job was too stressful, or that you had bad ‘impasses’. It comes across very poorly.
CFA may help with security analyst roles, but those roles can be very stressful. Wrong way if you want to be an economist.
I’d recommend pairing the CFA with a decent grounding in economics, specifically monetary policy as that’s going to have large impacts for your security analysis, especially from a top down view. It’s probably not resume worthy, but you can take some cheap courses through mises.org to get a good alternate perspective on the economy versus what most schools teach. Economic theory is fun, applied economic theory is BS. In my humble opinion.
Go Do a PhD or Master’s dude, and please don’t tell future employers your job was “too stressful” and you can’t work with your boss anymore…
You most likely need a PhD to become a legitimate economist. Financial institutions do hire some “economists” who don’t have PhDs, but such roles are sparse and the head guy always has a PhD. Academia is out of reach without a PhD.
That’s pretty much the case, but at the bank I worked for a lot of the “economists”/research team only had a master’s or occasionally bachelor’s. The head guy did have a PhD, but there were some fast-rising stars who did not. Getting into a top PhD econ program is extremely difficult - I was only accepted at two top 15 programs for an econ PhD, despite a heavy math background and top grades and test scores, and years later got into quite a few top 5/top 10 law and MBA programs, just as a point of comparison. Basically you will be competing for just a handful of spots against the best students from the top US schools (MIT/Stanford/Chicago types) as well as lots of European/Asian applicants with a top master’s and several publications.
PhD: how to take your B.S. to another level.
Thanks for the insight and a choice of words
Earlier i said the CFA isnt much help… but i recently was browseing around BMOs capital markets page and a few senoir economists including the cheif economist are actually CFA charterholders. Found it quite interesting you can read about them here: