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This summer I was offered an internship for Merrill Lynch in my hometown of Towson, Maryland. For eight weeks, I worked five days a week for an average of thirty hours. There are numerous Merrill Lynch offices in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. area. Offices in Annapolis and Baltimore are greater in numbers and advisors. The Towson region only has about fifteen advisors and four client assistants. However, almost all of those advisors started their careers in Baltimore. The Towson office was for more established advisors who already have a distinguished client list. Because the office was much smaller, I was the only intern for the summer, which proved to have both its ups and downs. On one hand, being the only intern gave me more responsibility. I had the privilege to meet with all the advisors, giving me new perspectives on how the job is done. However, on the contrary, it also meant that I did not have a defined job description. For instance, each advisor would have different tasks for me to perform. Nonetheless, this experience proved to be beneficial.

Although I had to carry out numerous tasks, there are several that were more important than others. During my first week, I began running Client Review Centers (CRC). This was a task that I regularly executed for nearly all the advisors. When a client comes in for a meeting, the financial advisor needs to show the progress their client has made over the years with Merrill Lynch. The Client Review Center gives the entire client's general information: the diversification of their portfolio, the amount of change his portfolio has undergone, and the client's total assets. In general, clients usually discuss their portfolio over the phone. However, when a client wants a change in their retirement plan, the Client Review Center can be very useful to show the details of a client's portfolio. Each advisor gave me a positive rating on making the CRC's. However, there were a few instances where I did not correctly highlight the client's assets. For example, if a client had made a significant profit over the years, I was to create a CRC where the assets are numerical rather than in percentages, and vice versa if a client had lost money.

Another task I performed was assisting two advisors on their new presentation to for perspective clients. I mostly worked on constructing a bullish support line for several of the clients. The bullish support line determines when there it is the right time to sell your stocks. It is very similar to work I had done in the past weeks with the point and figure analysis. To begin this work, I took a list of clients that had recently bought new shares of stock. It's true that the majority of the clients deal strictly with mutual funds or annuities, but there were numerous cases where clients decide to buy stocks. With the list of clients, I researched the stocks they had bought. Of course, there must be a buy signal, which the support line will indicate. Once the line indicates a buy, you make a mark at a period of time when the stock was falling, then draw the trend line up at a forty-five degree angle. The opposite of the bullish line would be the bearish support line which thus telling when to buy rather than to sell.

By taking these reports of stocks bought, I made graphs that reflected the stocks bought compared to the rest of the market: the NYSE, DJIA, and S&P 500. Usually, when the market increases, those stocks are directly correlated to the market. I then graphed when from the time a buy indicator was placed on the stock and made the bullish support line. From there, I saw where the stock was in relation to the support line. All the stocks were above the support line; if they had been below the line, the advisors urged their clients to sell. This gave me the opportunity to see exactly how much each stock fluctuated. Again, the advisors gave me a high ranking. And although I executed the task without any problems, the advisors felt that I should have included more of my own personal input. When I completed a point and figure analysis, they also wanted my opinion on why the stock was a buy or sell indicator, or an explanation how a particular stock reacted to the rest of the market.

The most important task I completed, throughout my internship, was making cold-calls. I called numerous businesses around the area and even several home calls. In most cases, a list was already prepared for me from the different employees, but there were times when I had to make the lists myself, which was very time consuming. I went websites that gave me a list of people who just filed to fill out a 5500 form. This is a form that every employee must fill out at a certain age. The website showed the details of their net assets and when they filed out the form. Although it was mind-numbing and exhausting at times, it is the most important part of sales. During the beginning of the internship, it was extremely frustrating to be turned down time after time. However, my manager advised me to continue to make calls everyday. He explained to me that everyone is trying to re-invent the wheel when it comes to sales, meaning advisors are continuously attempting new ideas to gain more clients. Some use seminars or emails to obtain new clients, but all the advisors assured me that making cold calls was the cornerstone of salesmanship. Although it was not my favorite part of the internship, it definitely prepared me for what lies ahead in this type of business.

While interviewing for the internship, I was asked what I hoped to accomplish during the internship. Along with a greater knowledge and experience of the business, I also wanted to create my career path. I thought that this