A credit analyst analyzes bonds and bond issuers and makes recommendations. It’s a job that requires understanding and categorizing massive amounts of information, as well as independent thinking.
HMW: I would say, attention to detail is very important and having some quantitative skills. You really do have to be able to create the spreadsheet, manipulate the spreadsheet in terms of figuring out what’s going to happen going forward. You don’t have to be a whiz at math or anything, you just have to have some comfort with the quantitative side. You have to be good at reading because you do read a lot of documents. And then, you also have to be willing to make your own judgement, as opposed to just going with the consensus because you’re really not going to make any money if you just follow what everybody else is doing. You have to come up with your own ideas. You really have to be a bit creative, a bit quantitative and definitely have attention to detail.