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agreed - i had this shitty Chinese solar stock i knew front and back. Pitched it to anyone and everyone, and got very positive feedback. I think it went bankrupt a year ago.

 

You'll get far less resistance pitching a stock they likely aren't familiar with in an area where you can exhibit some level of expertise. I was a teacher and pitched an international private tutoring company. My ex pitched a small-cap makeup company. We both got multiple buyside offers. It's perfectly ok to pitch something they've heard of (although not google or apple or something like that), but you better have a truly diversified viewpoint (like why the NYT should be trading like Netflix rather than a newspaper). This is hard to do, but it may be easier to find than a company they haven't heard of that you can speak to.

 

Have 4 stocks in your back pocket and rotate depending on the shop you're interviewing at:

A growth story stock A value play stock A stock to short An emerging market stock - (can use a bit bigger name like BMW etc.)

26 Broadway where's your sense of humor?
 

Just as a side note, this is good for experienced hires looking to move to a hedge fund, but for undergraduates, it's probably a bit much. Having two stock pitches is usually enough, and there's no need to explicitly have a emerging markets stock pitch on hand (unless you really want to). You usually won't be asked for a short either, except perhaps at certain hedge funds.

To be honest, I went through all of my undergraduate interviews with only a single good stock pitch, plus a rather crappy backup in case the first one fell through. Things went fine for me.

 

1 long you know front and back, and 1 short you vaguely understand as a back-up (I've heard from first hand sources, pitch me a short)

 

Yeah, I've noticed that even at a slightly more senior level, having a ton of half-baked ideas can often do the trick as well, especially if you come for initial meetings when there was no mutual understanding that you'll have to pitch something. Of course, if they say "come up with a pitch for me for next week" it's a slightly different matter and it's always best to stay away from the mega-caps of the world that everyone has an opinion on.

 

I pitched a small cap value stock in my AM interview, didn't take me long to filter through the technicals I was looking for on finviz, they seemed pleased about what I knew about it, and I got a second interview. So I would suggest just running a screen for a small cap stock that is trading cheap at the moment and maybe in a trough you expect it to climb out of (obviously give some reasons why you think this), and if you can find an analyst report or WSJ article to back you (which thankfully I did), I imagine they'd be impressed like my interviewers.

-"Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance."
 

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