We recently launched a Q&A series featuring employees across roles, ranks, and global regions to showcase the many career opportunities available at our firm. This interview, the second in the series, is with Izzy Masters, a macro investment analyst based in New York, who joined BAM in September 2020.
In the Q&A that follows, Izzy shares what drew her to BAM, her experience starting a new job while working remotely, macro trends she’s watching, and more.
Q: Thanks for chatting with us, Izzy. Tell us about your background, and what drew you to BAM?
A: At my former firm, AllianceBernstein, I was co-head of quantitative trading. I was looking to move back into a macro seat, which I'd previously had at Merrill Lynch. I wanted to go to the investment side.
People I knew told me BAM was hiring, and I had a great conversation with a recruiter at the firm. My resume was really focused on equity trading, but the recruiter picked up on my interest in expanding beyond equities. It was great timing, because BAM had just hired a PM who was building out a new macro team. I was put in touch with him, and the opportunity felt like a perfect fit!
Q: What is your role at BAM?
A: I joined a new team led by Matt Potts, who's based in San Francisco. Matt came from BlackRock, and he joined BAM the same day I did. We're involved in launching a new semi-systematic macro investing group. Our primary focus is liquid emerging-market foreign exchange rates, expressed via swaps and derivatives.
My role is to contribute to the research effort, as well as to the development effort and potentially to the effort to open up into new spaces, like swaptions. My role is a bit of a Swiss Army Knife.
Right now, we're focused on just getting everything going. At some point, the split will be more like 50-50 between the code build-out and true data prospecting. For me, it's pretty fun to sit in both seats.
Q: What tools and technologies do you use?
A: I live in PyCharm and Jupyter Notebooks, which are integrated development environments (IDE) that let you program in different languages, but specifically Python. I'm still navigating more of the systems that we'll ultimately use. In addition, BAM has a phenomenal application turbo, which I think was originally built as an Excel tool, but it's now been extended into a Python tool. That's definitely something I leverage a ton.
Q: As a macro analyst, are there any trends you're watching closely?
A: I'm very curious to see how the Covid-19 pandemic shakes out globally. What's going to happen in India? What's going to happen in China? How is South Africa going to do? At this point, we don't know the answers. A lot of the projections on economic growth and inflation are really just best guesses.
It will be fascinating to see how economies and conditions across the world will bounce back, the way they will bounce back, and how that will shape human relations and the markets.
Q: What's been your experience tackling a new job while working remotely?
A: Being new, I have a lot of questions, and every day is like a scavenger hunt to figure out who might have answers. If someone does, great. If not, they point you to somebody else. That's been a great way to meet people.
Zoom makes it easy to get face time with colleagues and share things on screen. And Slack makes it easy to ping and connect with people at the firm.
Q: How would you characterize the firm's culture?
A: BAM is different from other firms. I don't get the sense that there's a super steep bureaucracy that's difficult to navigate, literally or politically. It has a very "family office" feel for such a big place, which is really cool.
I'm sold on the fact that if BAM brings you on as an employee, they bring you on completely. They don't hire you and leave you out to dry. There's a huge effort to ensure you have everything you need to succeed.
Q: What are some of your other interests?
A: Before I went to college, I was a professional ballet dancer with the Washington Ballet in D.C. I retired from that to pursue a career in diplomacy, which somehow led me to a job at Merrill Lynch in Sales and Trading.
In school, I was a sucker for behavioral economics. I was a double major in Sociology and poly-sci, focusing on social statistics with a triple minor in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. What I really find fascinating is aggregate decision making and how that manifests itself in the markets.
What advice do you have for someone joining BAM?
A: Having a self-starter attitude that doesn't come with an ego is really important. The culture at BAM is friendly, collegial, collaborative. Be sensitive to that – and make the most of it.
