Jim Valentine, Executive Director, Driehaus Center for Behavioral Finance and Finance Professor
Finance student, Liz Aguilar, gains new perspective around pursuing a career in finance and career choice after conversation with Finance Professor, Jim Valentine.
PROFESSOR VALENTINE IN THE CLASSROOM
Professor Valentine currently teaches while holding the Executive Director position in the Driehaus Center for Behavioral Finance. Throughout our conversation Valentine emphasized how much he enjoys all of his roles, even though at times it is overwhelming to have competing priorities. The Finance Professor recently dedicated a great deal of time to ensuring that the curriculum for his Principles of Stock Picking (FIN 336) and correlated homework assignments contain ample amounts of practical examples for students. It may take up to 8 hours to design one exercise for students to ensure it is well done. He referenced an exercise he created in Excel to compute bond values while using a bond calculator which ultimately turned into a 3-hour e-learning module that he substituted into his FIN 330 class. It took a total of 3 days to create this exercise, but now that the design has been perfected it can be implemented into several classes. Going forward, he is hopeful there will be less new content to create so he can shift his efforts to other DePaul priorities.
PROFESSOR VALENTINE ON TEACHING
When Valentine was an analyst he developed a reputation for training his subordinates who then went on to become very successful in the department. It was not long until people started taking notice of how well his trainees were doing. Valentine says he pushed them a lot and pushed them hard. He accredits his good communication skills and ability to set expectations for the success of his trainees while ensuring he provided them the tools they needed to be successful. During 2012, Valentine started officially teaching through his self-made company, AnalystSolutions. Professor Valentine enjoys teaching and overall loves watching people on his team go on and become successful in their roles.
PROFESSOR VALENTINE ON CAREER CHOICE
I asked Professor Valentine what led him to Equity Research as a career choice, and he stated, “A finance professor recommended I explore the option of Equity Research. After researching and learning more about this career path, I found it interesting and decided to pursue it as a career.” Valentine went on to become very successful and was recognized for stock picking, earnings forecasts and client service by the Wall Street Journal, Thomson Reuters, Institutional Investor and Greenwich Associates.
Valentine achieved the position as one of the top three among all 2,000 sell side analysts and credits his success to hard work and learning to work smarter than the competition. He stated, “Back then and even now (I recognize), I am never the smartest person in the room. Sheer intelligence does not ensure success. A lot of it comes down to perseverance and leveraging your skills”.
Valentine, who was an analyst for 10 years at Morgan Stanley, built one of the strongest franchises with numerous top rankings and awards and then moved into management where he was forced to fire an abundance of staff during the 2008 recession. He made the decision to leave his position, as he no longer wanted to continue to dismiss great talent due to budget cuts. Valentine spoke specifically about how he had to fire an individual that he had grown to know very well and who was very good at his job. The individual was devastated upon hearing he was being let go. After this experience, Valentine made the decision to resign.
The creation of AnalystSolutions came about after writing, Best Practices for Equity Research Analysts, and receiving a large volume of individual emails and phone calls asking Valentine to train their analysts. Demand ultimately led to the creation of AnalystSolutions because he thought, “Well, I guess I need to have a company for this in order to train people around the world.”
ANALYSTSOLUTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM
Professor Valentine teaches the Principles of Stock Picking course, with a majority of the material coming from Analystsolutions. The material has been modified for students because of the complexity. “The idea is that the person/student has been on the job for 1-3 years.” Valentine informed that roughly 50-75% of the material in AnalystSolutions is transportable and is used in his classes at DePaul.
Valentines philosophy is that he does not want DePaul students to pay for anything that pertains to his company (for his class he provides free access to his book). All of his company’s online services are free for DePaul students! He emphasized that he is not trying to promote his brand and stated when a DePaul student wants to benefit from his content he advises them to sign up and he will then email the student access to all workshops.
PURSING A DEGREE IN FINANCE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF STARTING EARLY
Valentine addressed specific extracurricular activities that he believes will provide an abundance of benefits to students pursuing a Finance degree. He first mentioned students should specialize as soon as possible. He said employers look for specialization as early as sophomore year. Valentine also recommended students try and complete as many finance courses as early as possible. Taking these finance courses early on will open up eligibility for internships and ensures you are in the position to talk about finance. Valentine highly suggests students interface with the industry practitioners as well, through associations. For example, the CFA society of Chicago will allow students to join at a discounted rate and it allows them to get a better sense of what’s going on in the investment community. Lastly, he said it is crucial students learn how to use Excel as it will be used very often in almost any finance role. Overall, Valentine emphasized how critical it is to be aware of what is going on in your field and to complete the requirements needed to work in the field as early as possible.