SHUAA has given me opportunities to grow my career and it will always be a special place for me.

After completing my internship with SHUAA in 2005, I accepted a position within the Sales team. I had just graduated with a a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration  majoring in Commercial Banking and Finance from the University of Balamand, Lebanon. My responsibilities were to provide support to the sales team including maintaining documentation and responding to client queries.

A year later, I was promoted to junior relationship manager handling accounts less than USD 2MN. In 2007, I had the opportunity to join the trading desk as a junior trader handling pure execution portfolios and now I work as an institutional sales trader on the trading desk.

My day starts at 7am as I prepare the Daily Morning Note for clients. It’s a one page note with emphasis on corporate actions, company and industry news and overnight announcements. At around 9am we have the morning meeting where our research team provide updates and their assessment of the overnight company and industry news and announcements. Part of my role, is to communicate those views to our clients. From about 9:30am, the pre-market phase begins and we start calling up our clients to give a summary of what might be expected for the day. At 10:00am markets open and we start taking and executing clients’ orders.

By 4:30pm all GCC markets close for the day. After close I usually reconcile all trades executed with my brokers across all markets and make sure our clients receive official confirmation by the end of the day.

This business has a long way to go in the UAE and I plan on growing with it.

As a portfolio manager at Shuaa Asset Management (SAM), my responsibilities are numerous. Yet, my day has always started the same since I joined SAM. The first order of business starts by tuning into the news. As I read, I take notes on what’s interesting, what to follow-up on and what could affect the portfolio. By 10am when markets open, I am fully informed on the latest major news and market moves globally. At the start of the trading session, I begin to place trades over the day and monitor the market for significant moves which may alter our trading strategy or present an investment opportunity. This continues till the markets close at 4.30pm.

As a team member of SAM, we have been thoroughly groomed to multi-task effectively. While trading, I am regularly chatting with brokers to gather market intelligence. In parallel, I carry out research work. Our team has its own research methodology, but it is part of our strategy to read others' research input – this helps us understand what other market participants are thinking and allows us to look for the best investments. Throughout the day, my team and I discuss various topics related to investments; companies, market trends, interest rates and such. We also revel in debating with one another on reasons for stock picks. This keeps us sharp, as we are very aware of our accountability to our investors.

I have a daily habit of conducting a comparative analysis of a particular industry sector in a specific stock market . I look at the fundamentals of each company and in parallel I evaulate the technical analysis to determine the trading behavior behind the stock movement. I conclude by selecting the best 2 companies for further analysis by the team. Usually I end up with questions, at which point we set up a management meeting or call to familiarize ourselves with the potential investment's management team and their strategy.

The job requires a great deal of discipline and focus, as it comes with a lot of pressure. For that reason I make it a habit to go to the gym daily.  

Aside from the thrill I get from trading and selecting investments, every day for me is a learning experience. Either I am studying a new industry, attending a seminar on developing technical and trading skills, or learning from one of my team members, who are highly skilled professionals. At the end of the day, or more appropriately evening, I get a great sense of fulfillment knowing that we managed to generate better returns for our clients.