The Real Wall Street Dress Code

Over at the Wall Street Journal’s FINS career site, Julie Steinberg has written a helpful piece for the incoming first-year investment bank kids who want to dress for success.

I’ll go a step further; here’s what this summer’s Wall Street freshmen should wear if they want to dress for reality

If you’re coming in as an investment banker, you will really only need a pair of pajamas.  You’re not ever leaving and will sleep in the office more nights than you could possibly imagine.  My friend Curtis once worked at one of those Nazi banks, forgot which one, they worked him one weekend until blood was pouring out of his nose.  There have been stories about rookie bankers catching naps in utility closets just to show how many hours they can work.  The truth is this is a part-hazing, part-barrier of entry thing.  None of the work a 23-year-old banker wannabe is doing at 1 am means anything, it’s just projects for the sake of projects.

If you’re beginning as a trader wear a fleece vest over a button-down shirt.  That way I know what you are when you’re standing on line in front of me at the Jiannetto’s pizza truck outside of JPMorgan on Park and 47th.  When there are too many of you trader types ahead of me I’ll look at my phone and say something like, “Oh no, not another Flash Crash!”  You’ll all run and I’ll get my two grandma slices that much quicker.  By the way, the fleece vest over a button-down shirt thing originated at SAC.  Stevie likes to keep the room freezing cold to keep traders alert so every trader you see in that uniform is imitating that, whether they know it or not.

If your path is sales trader or institutional brokerage, be sure to wear something that will adequately conceal a wire.  You’ll be spending much of your day talking to your buy-side and hedge fund clients and sharing information left and right.  There are some conversations that the bugs in your phone won’t pick up so for these, the Justice Department asks that you make sure to have some kind of recording device on you at all times.

Prospective sell-side analysts should pretty much come in with a brown bag over their heads, eyeholes cut out of course.  You will spend the next decade blowing people up with nonsensical calls like “overweight” or “strong neutral”.  Your price targets will be based on discounted cash flow analysis which doesn’t really mean anything in the actual supply and demand-based stock market.  Getting used to hiding and wearing a bag to cover your shame is probably a great idea, start early.

The private wealth management and financial advisory trainees should wear suits.  And with those suits I’d recommend a stop watch instead of a wrist watch, preferably one with a clock that counts down to zero.  Set it to begin counting down 90 days from now because that’s how long you’ll have to raise your first $20 million in assets.  You probably won’t hit this minimum but that $16 million you managed to scrape up will be handed over to the grateful 45-year-old VP when you’re let go this fall.  It’s the Circle of Life.

Hopefully this has been helpful.  Bon Chance, Class of 2011!

 

 

 

This content, which contains security-related opinions and/or information, is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon in any manner as professional advice, or an endorsement of any practices, products or services. There can be no guarantees or assurances that the views expressed here will be applicable for any particular facts or circumstances, and should not be relied upon in any manner. You should consult your own advisers as to legal, business, tax, and other related matters concerning any investment.

The commentary in this “post” (including any related blog, podcasts, videos, and social media) reflects the personal opinions, viewpoints, and analyses of the Ritholtz Wealth Management employees providing such comments, and should not be regarded the views of Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC. or its respective affiliates or as a description of advisory services provided by Ritholtz Wealth Management or performance returns of any Ritholtz Wealth Management Investments client.

References to any securities or digital assets, or performance data, are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others.

Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here: https://www.ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers

Please see disclosures here.

What's been said:

Discussions found on the web
  1. خرید کولر صنعتی commented on Feb 06

    خرید کولر صنعتی

    Just beneath, are a lot of absolutely not connected world wide web internet sites to ours, nevertheless, they might be definitely really really worth going in excess of.

  2. دوربين مداربسته واي فاي commented on Feb 06

    n,vfdk lnhv fsji دوربين وايرلس بيسيم

    Wireless security camera systems from CCTV Camera Pros consist of wireless transmitter and receiver antennas and allow closed circuit cameras or IP security cameras to transmit a wireless signal using a 5.8 Ghz signal up to 4 miles.

  3. تبلیغ گوگل commented on Feb 07

    تبلیغ در گوگل ادوردز

    My developer is attempting to persuade me to transfer to .net from PHP. I have often disliked the thought since of the expenses. But he’s tryiong none the less. I have been employing Movable-kind on a variety of internet sites for about a 12 months and…

  4. وی پی ان ایفون commented on Feb 08

    vpn ایفون

    Great submit! We will be linking to this excellent publish on our site. Preserve up the great producing.

  5. Closed-circuit television commented on Feb 09

    cctv

    Write a lot more, thats all I have to say. Practically, it seems as although you relied on the online video to make your point. You clearly know what youre conversing about, why waste your intelligence on just posting video clips to your website when y…

  6. persian tar commented on Feb 09

    persian tar

    […]we came across a cool web site that you could possibly delight in. Take a appear if you want[…]

  7. free resume commented on Feb 09

    free resume

    […]that is the finish of this post. Here you’ll locate some internet sites that we feel you’ll value, just click the links over[…]

  8. سیستم حفاظتی commented on Feb 09

    سیستم حفاظتی

    we choose to honor heaps of other internet internet-web sites on the world wide web, even when they arent linked to us, by linking to them. Under are some webpages truly well worth examining out

  9. خرید vpn اندروید commented on Feb 09

    vpn ایفون

    right here are some hyperlinks to websites that we link to because we feel they are really worth checking out

  10. بهترين دوربين مداربسته commented on Feb 09

    پردازش سيگنال نورون

    A typical installation application is to position a rack mount unit at the end of your surveillance DVR (if you have a DVR with 8 or more channels) and a single protector on the camera end of the coax cable run.

  11. سرور مجازی فرانسه commented on Feb 09

    سرور مجازی فرانسه

    […]although web sites we backlink to beneath are considerably not connected to ours, we feel they may be essentially really worth a go by way of, so have a look[…]

  12. sell domain name commented on Feb 09

    sell domain name

    […]usually posts some very exciting stuff like this. If you are new to this site[…]

  13. خرید دوربین مدار بسته commented on Feb 10

    خرید دوربین مدار بسته

    I was curious if you at any time thought of modifying the format of your website? Its quite properly composed I love what youve acquired to say. But maybe you could a minor much more in the way of content so people could link with it better. Youve got…

  14. خرید vpn وی پی ان commented on Feb 10

    vpn ایفون

    here are some hyperlinks to internet web pages that we url to for the reason that we imagine they could be actually worth visiting