Career conversations: Think like a fund manager, not just an investor

During my civil engineering career in Dubai, I started my first investment, which eventually led to an 85% loss, which prompted me to learn more and more about investments. Hi, I am Jayakumar. I'm a CFA® Charterholder.  

After my initial losses, I kept on reading for three years from 2000 until 2003 and in the middle of 2003, I realized that it was an excellent time to make the investment. That investment got doubled within a year, and from that day onwards, I kept on investing every month from my savings and all until now.

While learning about investments and all, I came to know there are investment conferences and seminars are being organized by reputable organizations, especially CFA Institute, CFA Society India and all.

In one conference, they were discussing about a report called the BRIC report. Goldman Sachs was having a report, how the growth prospect of India will be in the next 20-30 years.  

I read that report. I got very much impressed and very much convinced that the growth prospect in India is very huge. So I thought this is the right time to migrate to India because the construction sector in UAE started going down.  

In the field of investment, if a person replicates the same strategy, he may not get the same result because the purchase time and the selling time of asset and their purchase prices differ, so the result will also differ. So there is a scope to identify, scope to express our skill in this field. That is why I have chosen to become an investment professional.

While my process in studying the investment-related magazines and all, I came to know about a book called "The Intelligent Investor." In that book, there is one write up about the CFA (Institute) and how Benjamin Graham was behind in setting up the CFA (Institute).  

Since Benjamin Graham was considered the father of investing, I was very much interested and I thought that I must do this one. And I have completed the CFA (Program) in the year 2021.  

After completing the CFA (Program), I started to think and work like a fund manager. Before I was actually thinking in, from the perspective of an investor only. What an investor will think, he will always look for return. But if you think and work like a fund manager, now you know why there is no return.

CFA principles has taught me in-depth knowledge about the valuations and all and what is the right time to invest, how to evaluate a stock, how to evaluate an investment thesis and all.  

As a CFA Institute member, I have access to a lot of resources, like the CFA Institute (Financial) Analysts Journal, and also they have a lot of research publications available in the website. Moreover, CFA Institute also conduct regularly events, which helps me to get updated about what's happening in this field.  

For a mutual fund distributors, CFA® certification is not a mandatory in India. Since I have completed the CFA (Program) means people want the highest qualified person to be their advisor. My clients understand my qualification and my capabilities and all. So it gives greater confidence to the clients in my investment advice.