Weekly Blog #16

Due: January 12th, 2015

By: Matthew W. Blair

       This week was a good one; I didn’t have to work much, school went by fast, and I finally got a mentor. ISM is going well and the independent nature of the class is really starting to pick up with everyone finding their mentors. My mentor is Mr. Travis Taylor, VP and Administrative Manager at Merrill Lynch. We met on my ninth interview when I was starting to lose hope. Initially I was restricting myself to just the Hedge Fund side of finance, and I was going to deep too fast. I skipped a lot of steps and I decided to “zoom out” a little, which is why I chose Mr. Taylor. He oversees 100+ financial planners all over the Dallas area, and has a wealth of knowledge within the field of finance. I look forward to working with him this year. In other news, I have been working on my Original Work twice a week and it is coming together nicely. I simply fill out a form reporting the ten stocks I am reporting with their Open, Close and % Change. I will have to conclude my reporting on the 26^th of January so I can write up my final report on the changes I saw.