Recently was reading about an index designed by a Harvard Business School alumnus which gives a "Sell", "Buy" or "Neutral" signal on the financial market. Its called the Harvard MBA Index!! To think of it its quite rational. It basically measures the percentage of people who take up jobs in market sensitive positions in the financial sector. These include investment banking, investment management, private equity, venture capital and hedge funds. Interestingly if the percentage exceeds 30, then its a sell signal and anything below 10 is a long term buy signal!!
Surprisingly in 2008, a record 41% of the passouts went for the so called "market sensitive" jobs and we know what followed thereafter in 2008 and 2009. In 2009, accordingly around 28% went to these jobs and in 2010 the figure stands at 31%. So to think of it from 2008 onwards right through 2009 and 2010 we have been mostly in the SELL TO NEUTRAL PHASE of the market. But financial market data shows otherwise. Year 2010 saw a sharp recovery in the global indices from the Abyss of 2008 and 2009.
Currently as things stand, the jobs data shows increased traction in the financial services "market sensitive" jobs. So probably we would see a much higher percentage of Harvard MBAs taking up these "dangerous" jobs.... hope its not the beginning of the next fall. Though am quite convinced that just like too many cooks spoil the broth, so does too much analysis of any given data destroy the significance of the data point!!
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