- Wall Street newcomers are often highly successful.
- But Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson says a key to success is learning to accept failures.
- Always being ready to up your game as you get promoted is also crucial, he said.
If you’re just getting started in your career on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley chief investment officer Mike Wilson has some tough love to share with you: life’s only going to get harder.
In an interview with Business Insider in December, Wilson listed a couple pieces of advice he gives to his new hires, interns, and even his kids.
Number one: you’re not going to be as successful as you’re used to being. Landing a job at an investment bank or research firm is an achievement, with a stellar academic record often being a prerequisite. So many youngsters entering banking are accustomed to outperforming. But failing is a fact of life in banking, Wilson said.
“A lot of people coming to Wall Street are overachievers,” Wilson said. “I say, ‘My guess is your historical report card has very few Bs on it. Maybe none. And definitely no Cs. And so what you’re going to have to get used to coming to Wall Street is you’re going to get a bunch of Fs, and you can’t even fathom what that feels like.”
How you adjust to that feeling will be one factor in how successful you become, he said.
“You picked the stock, it went to zero, everybody knows you made a mistake. How are you going to deal with that?” Wilson said.
“The best investors generally get 55% of their calls correct,” he continued. “There are a lot of dynamics that play into being a good investor, a good analyst, a good strategist. But I think the hardest one is learning how to accept failure, learning how to be wrong, admit it, and move on. Acknowledge your mistakes.”
Wilson, who is also Morgan Stanley’s chief US equity strategist, has put his advice to use in recent years. He was one of the most accurate market forecasters in 2022 amid a market sell-off, but his ongoing bearishness caught up with him in 2023 when the market turned around. He issued a mea culpa, offering more bullish price targets since then alongside the ongoing stock-market rally.
As for his second piece of advice, Wilson said to be ready to continually up your game as you become more successful.
“I have two sons in their 20s, and I always kid around with them. When they’re successful at work, I say, ‘Congratulations, you’re gonna make it to the next level. Guess what: It’s going to be harder,'” Wilson said.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, he said.
“That’s life. Every rung is harder, and that’s the thrill of it, too, because you’re competing at a higher level,” he said. “If you’re successful, you just understand that dynamic, and that’s something I think young people need to know — what exactly they’re signing up for.”
In the interview, Wilson also shared more general career advice that can apply to people outside of the financial industry as well: stand up for ideas that you have high conviction in. In his role, that means sometimes issuing calls against consensus. He called this taking personal risk.
“You’ve got to be willing to go take a stand on stuff, whether it’s in a meeting, with people you report to, pointing out things that you don’t agree with, kind of making a firm stance,” Wilson said.
