My Journey From Medicine to Finance

I started investing in the stock market some after I finished my fellowship training in occupational medicine from the University of Cincinnati. The year was 1995, technology stocks were hot, and stock prices were going crazy. New internet companies with no earnings were competing with brick and mortar businesses with steady earnings, and internet companies were winning-on paper at least. Some of my physician friends were making more in stocks then they were in their jobs as physicians. I had read somewhere that while investing, one needs to diversify, so diversify I did, or so I thought. I bought Microsoft, Intel and Cisco Systems and told everyone I was well diversified. What else could I do? I had a hardware company, a software company and a network company! I assumed my choices were signs of great wisdom. Did I invest in any other sector besides technology? No, I replied. And why were these crazy people asking me such dumb questions. Why were they so clueless about the current market conditions on the Wall Street?
The Street marched on and I, along with others, was in for a ride. Greenspan made the speech about “irrational exuberance”, but the market did not pay any heed to this. “What does Greenspan know?” the logic went; this was after all a new economy.
Most of us know how it ended in 2000. Some of my fellow physicians had bought stocks on the margin and lost almost all of their hard earned money. Luckily, I escaped to a degree, but not due to being savvy. Two months before the bubble burst, I had to liquidate most of my holdings to buy a parcel of land to build an occupational medical center.
So when I survived where other had perished, fellow physicians started seeking my advice. I was thrilled and petrified at the same time. I was excited that I was the new local “expert”, but petrified because I feared that I may dispense some faulty advice and my friends would lose money on my account. For this reason, I started reading – voraciously. First it was the financial magazines, and then the books. One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch was among the first books on investing that I read—more on that in later blogs. The more I read, the more I realized the shallowness of my knowledge, which only gave me more reason and motivation to keep reading even more. Before I knew it, I was hooked.
Before long I was reading textbooks on finance, economics and portfolio management to make sense of the companies’ financial statements. By the year 2002 I found myself getting more and more excited about the field of finance and by contrast I felt burnt out in Occupational Medicine. Listening to my patients on why I shouldn’t send them back to work and the incessant complaints from various human resource managers about why their ‘perfectly healthy workers’ are on ‘light duty’ took its toll.
On the other hand, my passion for finance became overwhelming and I discussed it with my wife, also a physician. Together we decided that I should take the plunge and quit medicine to pursue a career in finance. The fact that my wife earned a decent paycheck and having only one son also helped.
In the June of 2004 I took my Series 7 and other state licensing exams. On November 21st, 2004 I became a Registered Investment Advisor and started getting paid for doing what I loved doing anyways. In the medical field knowledge and learning is stressed a great deal. We study and train for a significantly longer time before we treat our first patient.
In finance I find that this is not always the case. Sometimes knowledge takes a back seat to salesmanship. It is my focus on knowledge and passion for finance that has enabled me to obtain my financial credentials of Certified Financial Planner® (CFP), Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC), and Certified Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC)© within three years of becoming a financial advisor.
It should not surprise you that most of my many clients are physicians. I practice in Simsbury, CT, and would like to be able to help more physicians.

I invite your questions or comments regarding this post.