Wall Street's Hiring Rally

As usual, the Street starts hiring again...after a huge rally.

There’s an old, cynical Wall Street phrase: The Street hires at the top, and fires at the bottom.

I have no idea if we are at a top or not, but the Street is definitely hiring.

I was with a friend of mine the other day, an analyst with a large, well-known Wall Street firm, who told me...they were hiring.

He said that the pay of analysts was starting to creep up, that it had been getting better for the last several months, as his firm was ramping up for an anticipated upturn in capital markets next year.

Huh? In case you are wondering, the average pay of the analysts I know (those who would tell me what they were making) went from roughly $1 million a year in 2000, to about $250,000 a year.

This is not a scientific survey, but I do know a lot of analysts.

To hear that pay might be going up...after years of going down...is certainly surprising.

Today, the FT ran a similar story: "Merrill ramps up recruitment programme," saying that Merrill was seeking to replace many of the financial advisors who fled the firm in the last two years with...gasp...signing bonuses!

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