Hogg
New Member
Bob Smith said:
I paid my dues as an engineer for a number of years, later ran a systems integration business, and then moved on to a larger department, first as a senior project manager, then to senior estimator. I am actually, after 13 years in my field, worthy of taking a chief estimator position with a larger firm in my area....a number of factors influence my decisions, one of them being my commute....its only 3.1 miles right now. But basically, all of my life, I have crunched numbers. Perhaps engineering seemed boring to me because systems integration did not involve numbers that often, rather, it involved processor selection, I/O design and what not.....it became canned after a while. When I moved on to run a group, I was ultimately responsible for placing a value on the projects that we competed for...not necessarily any value, but the right value, one that was competitive, yet not below cost.
Today, I perform the same job albeit, in a slightly different field. I value projects up to $ 5MM and head up the competitive bidding effort. I could easily handle larger projects of say $ 10-20MM however, my company has found that projects up to $ 5MM are easily managed and we stay in our zone of comfort. But the long and short of it is.....all I do all day long is determine what something is worth. Tracing my roots back to my first 'real' job some 14 years ago wherein I was essentially a runner for a real estate developer.....I learned about limited partnerships, evaluating deals from the dirt buy through marketing and sales of the completed project, and also learned quite a bit about mining for prospective sellers of prime real estate by using such tools as TRW Information Services databases and ultimately, driving to a location in my vehicle and assessing qualities such as ocean view potential, site feasability for multi-family residential development, wish list risk (ie, improvements that the city would require in order to pass the project through plan check - sidewalks, curb and gutter rehabilitation, utitility issues and the like) and basically, this guy who was some 30 years older than me schooled me in keeping an ear to the street, shaking hands and making friends, and putting together the deal. Mind you, at that point in time, I was actually very old for my age and could hold an intelligent conversation with his business partners and it allowed me to ask a lot of questions and to learn quite a bit. Aerospace in El Segundo went flat on its ass in 1989 and crushed real estate development in the beach communities....even Olguyn & Rutherford, two of the richest old bastards in the business, had a tough time when 1989 came. So the limited partnerships began to disband, there was little for me to do, and I had to find another job.....and somehow, I ended up in the field that I am in.
Now mind you, 4 years ago, I was buying stock like the average person, calling my broker at Merryl Lynch and buying a hundred shares at a time and paying through the ass on both the price of the issue and the cost of the trade. I later endeavord to become very smart at this game and I've made some strides but I still have a long way to go.
Now that I think about it......that conversation that you and I had.....have you ever considered going to work for a brokerage??? You have the educational background and practical knowledge of the industry....it seems to me that it might be a good fit.
And yes, is it not funny that the large percentage of funds cant beat the S&P???
