Ask me anything: Undergrad HF Summer Intern

Hi fellow monkeys,

Recently, xqtrack posted a fabulous forum with very helpful info on HF role. I am open to answer any other questions people may have about HFs in particular if you are interested in hearing from the perspective of an intern.

I interned as an analyst at a multi-strat hedge fund this summer. I performed basically the same role as a typical hedge fund analyst would do such as working on ideas for the PM, maintenance for names, and sourcing new theses.

 
Best Response
Isuckatlife:

How did you land the internship?
How did you source new ideas?
Was the modeling very intensive?

Landing the internship was pretty hard. I cold-emailed a lot of funds, and I finally got an offer that seemed interesting. I think the key to trying to get a HF internship is persistence.

Sourcing is an aspect of investing that even professionals have trouble at doing well. Form 13Fs are an extremely useful tool to find good ideas. By coat tailing good HF managers, you can really discover nice investments. It takes time though to look through a lot of Form 13Fs to find the company that meets your required criteria and also presents an attractive risk/reward profile.

Suprisingly, modeling was much simpler than I anticipated. I only had a couple tabs at the most. From my experience, it seems the buy side is much more focused on comps than DCF, which is extremely volatile to assumptions. It is important to really have some kind of rationale for each and every assumption than just putting in some random number that you think may work. Most funds are focused more on protecting the downside though than the upside.

 
WhartoniteInvestor:
Isuckatlife:

How did you land the internship?
How did you source new ideas?
Was the modeling very intensive?

Landing the internship was pretty hard. I cold-emailed a lot of funds, and I finally got an offer that seemed interesting. I think the key to trying to get a HF internship is persistence.

Sourcing is an aspect of investing that even professionals have trouble at doing well. Form 13Fs are an extremely useful tool to find good ideas. By coat tailing good HF managers, you can really discover nice investments. It takes time though to look through a lot of Form 13Fs to find the company that meets your required criteria and also presents an attractive risk/reward profile.

Suprisingly, modeling was much simpler than I anticipated. I only had a couple tabs at the most. From my experience, it seems the buy side is much more focused on comps than DCF, which is extremely volatile to assumptions. It is important to really have some kind of rationale for each and every assumption than just putting in some random number that you think may work. Most funds are focused more on protecting the downside though than the upside.

Maybe I'm assuming too much but all you were doing was reading 13F's to get new ideas? Hmm. I thought you might be doing more than that even as an intern.

Did any of the ideas you sourced or help to source wind up in the portfolio?

 
vBEARED:

What school did you go to?

Attention to detail brother.

[quote]The HBS guys have MAD SWAGGER. They frequently wear their class jackets to boston bars, strutting and acting like they own the joint. They just ooze success, confidence, swagger, basically attributes of alpha males.[/quote]
 
vBEARED:

What were the hours like?

What other internships have you done?

Other work experience?

What school did you go to?

50-70 hrs a week; HF was more concerned with the quality of the work I did than the quantity of hours. I'd rather not disclose too much info about my other work experience. My username answers your last question

 

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