Named one of Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in Finance, Saira Malik built her career on reliability.
“I often tell people that I turned my hobby into my professional career which is the main reason I continue to love being an investor,” says Malik.
While maintaining a realistic outlook during the Covid-19 era, she also has good news: as the pandemic slowly turns a corner towards improvement in the United States, so will the economy. Recent upheavals on Wall Street might make the market volatile, but with a vaccine around the corner, she predicts it will stabilize in the long run.
Saira Malik dove into finance head-first
Malik began her career as a student. Even before graduating, she earned her stockbroker licenses and started working, as well as running a newsletter.
“If people liked my stock picks, I asked them to trade through me as their stockbroker,” Malik tells Barron’s. “I used it to work my way through college. On a more formal level, she started out at J.P. Morgan in 1995. She then transferred to Nuveen, where she still works.
At Nuveen, Malik is the Head of Global Equities. In this capacity, she is responsible for about a third of the company’s $1.1 trillion in assets. She is also a member of the company’s global investment committee and equity investment committee. At times, Malik’s predictions and opinions seem counterintuitive. But by and large, her significant experience and regular success have earned her respect in the stock market.
Saira Malik learned from family first
Malik’s family has played a large role in her decisions. “My parents immigrated from Pakistan and had a very strong work ethic which they also instilled in me,” Malik recalls. “When I was in high school, we often had the financial news channel on in our house.”
In addition to inspiring her to go into finance this way, Malik’s grandmother inspired her by showing her how to forge her own path. Her grandmother was one of the first female medical students allowed to enter medical school in India.
“Like my grandmother, my goal is to set the right example in both work and life by acting with integrity and working hard to achieve my goals as an example for my children,” Malik explains. She hopes that her success in finance will be indicative of women’s role in the field in the same way her grandmother’s entrance into medicine helped bring along the large percentage of women in India’s medical schools now. “Can finance get to that?” she asks. “I took on a role, I saw women doing it. I moved up, and now I’m saying to women, you can do it too.”
Saira Malik predicts hopeful outlooks for 2021
Recently, Malik has encouraged buying stocks, particularly in the technology sector. “We’re looking for a slower for longer recovery,” Malik explains about the economy. “We aren’t seeing this being a V-shaped recovery anymore.”
She adds that the pandemic, and recent upheavals in Wall Street, may continue creating spikes and slowdowns. “What we’re seeing is the rise of the retail investor,” she notes, referring to the recent skyrocketing of GameStop and AMC stock. “They’re becoming more important as the easy access to trading applications, zero commissions, and social media.”
This creates some volatility in the market. Nevertheless, she notes that “if you take a bigger picture look and take a step back, there’s a vaccine right around the corner. Also, stimulus is in place. And so our view is that 2021, longer term, will still be a year where earnings growth that drove markets higher.”
Visit Nuveen for Malik’s latest updates here.
