Saturday, April 18, 2009

Light in the tunnel

After very strong Q1 results from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Wells Fargo some people claim that the situation of the financial industry starts to improve. The banks, which suffered extremely large losses during 2008 are now coming back to profitability. Citibank recorded the first positive (and solid) quarterly result for the first time since the middle of 2007. It is worth to mention that vast majority of these results was generated by sales&trading divisions.

Although it's far to early to claim that the banks are coming back to health, I firmly believe that this is definite sign of the recover of the financial industry.
Of course the banks will not restart hiring immediately. It's even possible that they will continue with firing, as the crisis in real economy is still unabated. However, recent increase in profitability gives a very good prediction about the future of the financial industry. It seems that the news about the death of financial sector are overstated - banking will still be here and will be strong - there is no other way. Any economy needs a healthy and profitable financial sector to sustain an economic growth.
I think it soon will be the best time for the newcomer to enter the industry. Now, it is really hard to find a job in the industry, but soon the demand for quality workers (with CFA for example) will pick-up. And at some point it will outweight the supply what would lead to wage inflation.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I beg to disagree, you should read the latest IMF predictions.

PhD Candidate said...

I have read this, but be aware that financial markets recover much earlier than the read economy...

The light in the tunnel is for the Financial Industry - not for real economy at this stage - I believe.

Many thanks for this comment.

Best wishes,
Stud

Neeraj said...

It's quite interesting how these bailed-out banks churn out a profit after receiving tens of billions in taxpayer's money.

I also think the recession is coming to an end seeing as the global stock markets have rallied well over 20%. Since markets are leading indicators of the economy, it's a good bet that recession is coming to an end - we just have to wait for the confirmation.

John Papers said...

Great Post!