Why I left equity research and are pursuing my passions

Explaining why I haven´t posted in the last 3 months

I decided three months ago to resign from my position as an equity analyst at my former employer. For two years, I have done a number of things at my former employer, which has made me grow a lot as an investor, my understanding of the financial industry, and, most of all, new friends and connections. I got to have my dream job, equity analyst, covering companies in industries I was very interested in and access to the management of these companies. Everything was super fun, but I felt I could do more for the company. I saw a few areas with room for improvement where I had skills that could help. For example, I rebuilt the financial models all analysts used because the old (six months old) was so heavy that analysts’ computers lagged, and Excel crashed. I also got involved with the product towards investors and gave ideas on improving reach and engagement and providing investors with the research they wanted. The podcast we started was one of those projects to provide our research in a format that is easier to consume (audio).

To summarize, my former employee and I were not on the same page regarding my path forward, and I felt a lack of appreciation for what I did for the company. And frankly, I hadn´t felt good about the situation for over six months, and it had affected me so much that my girlfriend said she saw a big difference in my face the same day I handed in my resignation.

For me, it was a few decisive things that made the decision easy for me. When they started to meddle in what I did in my spare time was one; that is the reason why I needed to stop posting here. Another thing was when they terminated the podcast I hosted with my best friend and colleague. I have a hard time agreeing with that decision as it was the most popular weekly format and had a higher engagement than anything else we looked at. It was also liked by a number of stakeholders, and we had pitched and fought for it for almost 9 months. We got the early results we wanted and had a good trend, so when they wanted to discuss the future of the podcast and when they wanted to change essentially everything or terminate, it felt like I got sucker punched in the stomach. It was especially disheartening when we only had made ~16 episodes at the time, and we knew what value the podcast could drive, as we did before with our previous podcast, Game of Stocks.

This is a great segway over to my second reason: I wanted to pursue my passions and be my own boss. A year back, I started to miss podcasting and the kind of community I had on social media, which was impossible due to my position as an equity analyst. Even likes on the wrong Twitter post got the wrong attention.

With Game of Stocks, we succeeded in getting some significant revenue despite the fact that we did it in our spare time and spent practically zero minutes on getting affiliate deals or sponsors for the podcast. I want to try out this journey, and I have many ideas to deliver value to you as a reader and on other platforms. I can disclose I will start two YouTube channels, one for English-speaking and one for Swedish speaking.

I won´t only do content creation; even if it is fun and have a lot of potential, it takes time to build up an audience and engagement. So now, I see it as an outlet for everything I want to explore within finance and share with you. I also have an idea about how equity research will change in the future with the creator economy, but my thoughts are not completely clear now. When they are, I will share it here or on Twitter.

In addition to content creation, I will work with consulting/advising within business development, financial planning and modeling, and investor-related questions in my company, Equityholm. As well as investments, of course. If you want to contact me, you can do it at douglasforsling@equityholm.com.

The third reason I left was I had a demanding full-time job and my own “side hustle"-company for four years. It started to take a toll. I haven´t taken care of my body and gained quite some weight. I am now over 30 and promised myself I needed to start focusing on what I wanted to do the most in life. I have had jobs in equity research, controlling, accounting, sales, and back office at a large bank. So it’s time to use all that knowledge and work for me. In the times we have, it can sound risky. However, when is it not risky to take a leap of faith and go on my own?

Thanks for reading all the way, and to make up for the radio silence, I have two bonus articles I will share with you in the coming days.