You can always turn things around.

Hi, I’m Tabarak. I write about business breakdowns, AI, finance and my own stories - from working in investing and restructuring to building things on the side.

This newsletter is where those worlds overlap. If you enjoy reading it, forward it to a friend or colleague; it would mean a lot to me. If you didn’t like it, feel free to send me hate mail.

I'll be honest with you about something before I say anything else.

When people ask me for career advice, my first instinct is always the same: why are you asking me?

I still feel confused about my own direction on most days. I am still figuring things out.

And I am nowhere near where I want to be.

But I have come far enough to know what has moved the needle for me in the past. And I owe it to you to be specific about that.

So here it is, unfiltered.

By June of 2018, my classmates had graduated and started their careers. I was back home in Taxila to spend a summer with my family for the first time in 3 years.

It was a summer of extreme heat, power outages, and a reality check I desperately needed as I watched what my parents went through every day to put me through a university where I spent most weekends partying.

In August 2018, I went back to IBA with one goal: GRADUATE.

I enrolled in my final six courses and signed up for the CFA Level I exam.

The reason I signed up for the CFA was mostly because some of my smartest friends said it was the hardest finance exam they'd ever taken. And to get some sense of accomplishment – I signed up for the hard thing.

I passed all my courses and cleared CFA Level I in the 90th percentile. About 95% of the time I ever spent in the IBA library happened in that final semester. I outworked myself for the first time in my life and weirdly, it felt easier than drifting.

After graduating in December 2018, I joined my friend Abdullah's travel startup, PakTouring. I spent four months hitchhiking across Northern Pakistan without making a single penny.

By spring, I was still living with my parents in Taxila and reality was setting in. I needed a job. I moved to Lahore to work as a Financial Data Analyst. My first day was April 4, 2019, I had not turned 22 yet.

My first salary was PKR 45K/month (~$300 at that time). I couldn’t afford to rent an apartment in Lahore so my friend Murtaza’s family took me in like their 4th son.

I worked at the back office of a German data vendor (2iQ Research) that sold insider trading data to quant funds globally.

It sounded exciting. But it was data cleaning. And I stopped learning after two months. If you have ever used the HDS function on Bloomberg, I was one of the people making sure that data was accurate.

After passing CFA Level II, I spent weeks negotiating my salary to PKR 60K. And in that back & forth, I realized I was negotiating for crumbs at a table I didn't need to sit at.

I quit my job. Packed my bags and moved to Karachi to find better work in capital markets where I was actually investing.

I picked up my phone and cold-called more than 150 people. Anyone with CFA after their name on LinkedIn. Anyone working in investing. Anyone willing to pick up the phone.

I asked them three questions:

I dropped my resume with anyone in capital markets and asked to be kept top of mind for relevant opportunities.

A week later, I got a call from Murtaza Memon. He was hiring an associate for a newly founded hedge fund called Vitality Capital. The founder, Syed Raza Mohsin, was based in NYC and was building a lean team in Karachi to invest in global markets.

As part of the interview, Murtaza asked me to build a financial model on Roku.

There was one problem: I had no idea how to build a financial model.

So I called the smartest person I knew, went to his apartment and had him build me a model overnight. It wasn't perfect. But I submitted it within 24 hours and got the job.

I joined Vitality Capital as an equity research associate (employee #5) in January 2020.

For the next 2 and a half years, most weeks I was putting in 80-100 hours. Even when I wasn't working I was reading about financial markets. I was obsessed.

The best part about a small team was observing how Raza was thinking when deploying millions of dollars. I'd do the research, he'd poke holes in my thesis, teach me his frameworks, then actually buy or sell based on what we found together.

Watching the market prove you right or wrong in real time taught me more than any CFA textbook ever could. In 2020, through the highs & lows of Covid, thanks to a very smart team, our fund returned 77%.

After making a grand total of $3,000 in all of 2019 (probably the lowest earner among all my class), I made $34,000 in 2020 – probably put me in the top 5% if not 1% of my class.

For a 22-year-old in Pakistan, that was life-changing money.

For readers in the U.S., $34,000 may not sound extraordinary. But for me, it changed my life. It gave me confidence that I could make real money and compete globally.

Those 2.5 years at Vitality changed my life.

But the biggest lesson isn't about CFA exams, networking or even hard work.

It's that your trajectory can change much faster than you think.

At 21, I was graduating with a 2.61 CGPA after 9 semesters and 2 summers.

A year later, I was working at a hedge fund learning directly from investors managing millions of dollars.

Nobody's path is perfect. I still don’t know what mine is.

A bad semester, a bad year, or even a bad start doesn't determine where you end up.

You can always turn things around.

Catch is a smart, proactive AI admin agent that handles your scheduling, inbox, emails, follow-ups, and day-to-day admin across Gmail, Outlook, Slack, WhatsApp, and phone.

No setup. No learning curve.

From swamped to sorted, instantly.

Try Catch Today for Free

Three small things before I go: