Can’t Deny It: An Unlikely Wall Avenue Profession and the Calls that Reshaped an Trade. 2024. Doug Terreson. Seminole LLC.
In Can’t Deny It, Doug Terreson, former head of Power Analysis at Evercore ISI and Morgan Stanley, supplies a captivating memoir wherein readers are taken on a journey by way of the worlds of the Gulf of Mexico oil patch, world oil markets, and Wall Avenue. He describes the within tales behind his notable market calls in such chapters as “The Period of the Tremendous-Main,” “The Golden Age of Refining,” and “The Pledge.” Terreson was ranked because the #1 or #2 Built-in Oil Analyst within the Institutional Investor ballot for 20 years and was a member of the All-America Analysis Staff (II) 24 occasions.
Within the chapter “Chopping My Tooth within the Oil Patch,” the writer shares that previous to his Wall Avenue profession, he labored as an engineer for Schlumberger (now SLB). He explains how his firsthand expertise with evolving applied sciences and processes within the oil trade gave him a major benefit in his finance profession.
Buying geological and technological experience, in addition to in depth discipline expertise, was a rarity amongst his Wall Avenue friends, who sometimes got here from economics or finance with Ivy League levels and labored in funding banks, asset administration, or personal fairness. For youthful practitioners, Terreson’s early profession path presents a reminder that working in a specific trade can present precious expertise previous to embarking on a finance or Wall Avenue profession.
As an actual property finance practitioner, I discovered Terreson’s abstract of crude oil and the chaos of 2008 throughout his time at Morgan Stanley to be essentially the most attention-grabbing a part of Can’t Deny It. His oil value forecast of $95/bbl for 2008, made on 14 March 2008, was in stark distinction to the prevailing Wall Avenue consensus, which was elevating forecasts every day to align with rising market costs. In March 2008, the West Texas Intermediate crude oil value bought as excessive as $110/bbl.
Goldman Sachs indicated a chance of $150–$200/bbl over the following six to 24 months, whereas different rivals asserted that oil may rise to $200 and even $300/bbl, which highlighted the bullish sentiment on the time. Terreson left Morgan Stanley on 8 July 2008, simply three days previous to the all-time peak oil value of $147/bbl on 11 July 2008. The value finally plunged to $37/bbl by December 2008 and for the 12 months as an entire averaged $98/bbl, inside 3% of his $95/bbl projection for 2008. This expertise taught him to belief his instincts and the worth of rigorous evaluation, in addition to to be prepared to face aside from the gang, even when it’s uncomfortable.
The chapter on privatizations highlights the essential function that Terreson performed within the preliminary public choices of Sinopec in China, Statoil in Norway (now Equinor), and Conoco in the US and explores the heartbreaking story of PDVSA, Venezuela’s nationwide power firm. The writer summarizes how Morgan Stanley’s proposal to denationalise PDVSA was rejected by the brand new authorities after Hugo Chávez gained the presidential election in December 1998.
The end result was an financial catastrophe in Venezuela as oil manufacturing plummeted on account of mismanagement, corruption, financial sanctions, and such flawed insurance policies as forex and value controls. In enthusiastic about the potential trajectory of PDVSA and Venezuela, the writer appropriately stresses how the nation had the chance to reflect Norway’s success with its huge sovereign wealth fund, benefiting present residents in addition to future generations.
My favourite chapter is the ultimate one, wherein the writer highlights present tendencies within the trade, together with people who led him to go away Evercore ISI in July 2021. A key issue for his departure concerned the broader modifications occurring inside Wall Avenue analysis and funding banking as corporations started to more and more compete extra with monetary capital reasonably than mental capital.
A key shift in sell-side analysis resulted from the European Union’s 2014 Markets in Monetary Devices Directive (MiFID), which launched new rules geared toward enhancing competitiveness. Underneath these new guidelines, monetary establishments should unbundle the price of analysis from different providers and instantly cost purchasers for it. This new system doesn’t favor older enterprise fashions that allowed analysts like Terreson the time, focus, sources, and freedom to make substantial, multi-year strategic forecasts. One other essential development is quickly evolving synthetic intelligence (AI), which has the potential to disrupt the monetary trade and the work of Wall Avenue analysis analysts.
The writer skillfully incorporates private tales — together with how his 48-foot boat named “Can’t Deny It” and crew gained the Emerald Coast Blue Marlin Basic — to clarify the enterprise classes he has discovered. This memoir, written by probably the most adorned analysis analysts in current many years, covers many related subjects and can enchantment to all finance practitioners and power trade specialists.
