What do equity research interns do?
Did any of you guys intern (as an undergrad) in equity research at a bulge-bracket firm (or any firm with an equity research internship program, actually)? What did you get to do during your internship?
I ask because I’m an equity research intern right now, but at a small firm with no structured internship program as such. I just want to see if I am gaining a similar set of experiences to that which an intern going through an actual program would accrue.
A sample of the kind of stuff I’ve done so far:
• Collected the specifications of all new and rumored laptops (information from company sites, press releases, tech blogs) for a Tech Sector analyst.
• Searched for and summarized academic papers on financial liberalization; a Banking Sector analyst used it in order to help him get material to put in a sector report.
• Used CEIC Data Manager and Bloomberg Terminal to grab a bunch of micro and macro data in order to make tables and charts e.g. charts like Current Account Balance vs. GDP growth, and tables where I calculated ratios like P/B, ROA for banks – some of these were actually sent to clients/used in reports
• Added 2Q2012 figures from a bank’s annual report into a 3-statement model.
• Wrote short summaries of the events and consequences of some non-systemic banking crises in the Asia-Pacific. The analyst added a couple more crises to the table and then put it in a report.
P.S. I guess some of you must be research analysts at firms which have structured ER internships - what do you guys give to your interns to do?
Yes, that is not too far of what we have our interns do.
Interns can't write reports as you need a license, and they also don't have the capacity to write in a presentable way to clients either. So most just end up helping out with data gathering, market research, and data entry.
However, my advice would be not let it weigh you down because the real value you will get is learning how the industry operates and learning through osmosis being immersed in the environment. You should use that time to pick peoples brains on how everything works during downtime, lunch, etc -
How do they speak to clients? How do you analyze data points in the market? What do clients look for in the work we do? How do we add value to clients? What are some challenges in our industry? Where do you see our industry going?
That is the real knowledge you can apply after your internship in your job hunt. It will have a much bigger impact that saying you learned how to collect tech shipments from Asia. It also shows you care and are knowledgeable to your current team which helps out a lot.
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I'm also working on a project to give people insight into the sell-side, would love to have your input in a short 20-s survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F8SBV9K
i guess interning at a hedge fund is a bit different, but besides updating financials and doing fundamental analysis, i also often create forecasting models and do some valuation comparisons
Update our industry primer we put on the back burner for the past 4 years.
im interning at a HF. I'm being trained to actually write reports and don't do anything else. By that I don't mean that someone else does the data fetching for me. I do everything from start to finish. If I have to gather data and do a long laundry list to get the report done, I do it myself.
Get your hands on the models and master them. Some firms place more of an emphasis on them than others but its always a great skill to have and its something you can always keep updating, building, and playing with after your internship. IMO I'd much rather play around with future earnings than try to write a "fake" research report when you get back to school and want to keep your skills sharp.
Hey guys, I'm an italian student and next year I will be doing the Master in Finance at ESADE. After the program I would like to do an Equity Research Internship somewhere.. Do you have any suggestion on what companies should I try to get the internship in?
Equity Research - Intern (Originally Posted: 05/19/2013)
Hello Fellow Monkeys,
I am about to start an ER internship (sell-side) this summer at a BB. Could you please give me an insight on the following questions:
What type of work will I typically do as an Intern?
How exhaustive would the programme be regarding my position?
How much expertise is expected from me to have in Excel and Bloomberg?
4*. What would teams/mentors generally expect from interns in order to regard them as value adding?
Thanks!
Havn't worked in ER but I can add the following:
1 - Updating comps, sending out emails and market updates, collating 3rd party research, maybe if you prove yourself you will be asked to put together an initial valuation model on a new coverage stock.
2 - Not sure what you mean by this...
3 - For Excel it's not so much expertise but efficiency which is useful. Obviously knowing the basic and intermediate formulae are helpful but knowing some of the more advanced formulae and VBA will not be expected or even really helpful. You probably won't be expected to know detailed knowledge of Bloomberg but you should be able to find a stock price, consensus estimates and financials.
4 - The only way you add value as an intern is by making other peoples lives easier. This means you don't make mistakes, you do the boring grunt work and you take the initiative. For example, if you having nothing to do and come across an interesting article relating to one of your companies / sectors, send it to your team. Don't do this too often though or it will get annoying. Offer to get people's food, coffee runs etc. Anything which improves their quality of life is value-adding.
As an aside, try and develop your own opinions of the companies you cover and, when appropriate, discuss them with someone you're friendly with. This shows an interest and critical thinking / analytical skills.
Good luck!
You will probably go through an earnings season for 2Q during the summer, which is likely to last 2-3 weeks. I would expect you to update the models for reported results and work on reports discussing the quarter (likely just updating the basic sections of the note). For the other part of your time there you'll probably work on different things like contributing to a big thematic note, different requests from clients/sales/your analyst (i.e. "send me your XYZ model", "can you tell me what multiples your industry traded at since 2008"), working on initiations of coverage (building a model, working on the initiation note), etc. In my opinion, the work you'll be doing will be based on your analyst. I know some analysts who like to write and hate modeling and I know a few who are the opposite. Additionally, some analysts may not trust you with certain type of work given you're only an intern.
Exhaustive in terms of hours? It might get bad during earnings season depending on what sector you're going into and how your team is. I would say you might be averaging 70-80 hours during those 2-3 weeks. During non-earnings days, I would expect your days to be 7am to 7pm. I wouldn't expect to work weekends, but you should be available if something comes up.
I think knowing your way around Excel is expected of you. You should know most of the basic short cuts to make your own life easier. No one wants to wait longer than they have to while you finish updating a model or put together a few charts. If you're not quick enough (and also make mistakes), you'll have the other associates or your analyst just tell you to stop so they can take over. Let me tell you that I get pretty damn annoyed when my more junior associate isn't done with something in the amount of time I think is acceptable.
I wouldn't worry much about knowing Bloomberg ahead of time. First of all, you don't know if you'll be using Bloomberg, FactSet, or CapitalIQ. You'll learn on the job. Also, if you need help with something go to your associate, they'll help you or they should have a number for you to call (I know for FactSet I have a bunch of business cards from FactSet reps who I reach out to if I need something. It's their job to help you).
ER intern (Originally Posted: 02/19/2013)
Hey guys. Just starting a part time ER gig. Pretty cool, laid back atmosphere. The boss told me to just mess around with Bloomberg for a while to get acquainted. Also, I hve been working on updating a couple of his models with all new historical data ( pretty long and tedious process). Is this typicl for ER interns? Will I be doing this the whole time you think?
When I interned in ER I wrote a 200 page dictionary called the "Healthcare Handbook: An Investor's Guide to Healthcare Terminology" that was used as a leave behind for a conference that they were hosting.
So yes, what you are describing sounds about right.
Bloomberg has some pretty good tutorials. If you're just bombing around, try the lessons.
you have to update models as an ER intern?!? dude... they might as well put you to work in the salt mines.
no, honestly just don't mess up the easy stuff and hopefully you'll get a chance to work on something cool soon.
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