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On the Monday before Thanksgiving, we were fortunate enough to have with us a panel of professionals from the Global Investment Research division at Goldman Sachs. The panelists represented both Equity and Credit research segments of the division, and offered us some great insight into Research as a prospective career path. Nona and Abhi kicked off the event with a market update, choosing to keep us updated on the Foreign Exchange Market and BP's new growth strategy. After the update, Abhi moderated a great discussion with the panelists. They each gave us a brief introduction of themselves and explained why they chose to research their specific asset class and industry. In general, those who chose to focus on equity loved the everyday volatility of markets and weighing the influence of news related shocks with their fundamental analysis. Credit, on the other hand, uses a completely different set of formulas to evaluate companies (fixed income models and yield curves), which means t...

It seems that China’s currency has hit a brick wall. President Obama has long pressured Chinese President Hu Jintao to curb inflation as the yuan has rapidly appreciated (gaining 3.5% this year alone, the second largest appreciation out of 25 emerging market currencies). Now however, it seems out of all emerging markets China has become a laggard. China’s currency is expected to perform the worst out of the BRIC countries during the current and following quarters. Only a few weeks ago the reverse expectations were true. The yuan had indeed fallen, but with the Premier’s intervention to curb lending rates and plans to decrease reserve ratios, spending was predicted to increase. Bond yield spreads between short-term notes and 10-year securities were also at their highest since May, indicating an expected economic recovery to standard GDP levels (9-11%). Inflation has been the primary concern for the past few quarters. However, with the upcoming Chinese New Year in January i...