500K+ PnL Contribution
3rd-year finance student, non-target West Coast school.
Currently interning at a very small fund (45m AUM). I have been working here part-time (working in the mornings and then going to school at night) for 7 months now. Per the title, I essentially had a 500k positive impact on PnL with the one idea that I was able to get on the books (~3% position for us) after pitching it to my PM. This was an earnings play in which we invested (shares) the day the company reported earnings (the company reported AMC). Earnings were great and we booked a gain of ~40%+ the next day. I have had multiple ideas that I have pitched over the past 7 months and this is the only one that means something since I contributed to performance, pnl etc.
YTD the fund is up ~22% and we are beating our benchmark by about 300 bps.
How significant, if at all, is my contribution as an intern? Should I talk about it in my resume or cover letters? If I should, how can I go about talking about it in my resume without coming off as a brag?
I will be interning at a middle market bank in M&A this summer and I want to end up at a MM L/S fund down the road.
All advice and feedback is appreciated, just trying to improve and build a track record.
Thanks y'all and Happy New Year!
Had a similar to experience at a fund I did a summer internship at a while ago. Was basically given like a small coverage that investment team did not have time to build out yet, and they adhered to one of my recommendations and it made some good money. I listed the figures on my resume, but was clear to detail the specific contributions I made as far as the idea generation process goes (talking to sellside, building out model, leveraging understanding of the niche subsector). Also the strategy matters and it sounds like this is some form of long-only fund (judging by benchmark outperformance metric), so your position being up 40% is less impressive than if it was required to be hedged with something else. In summary I would say definitely state it with the direct P&L attribution figures, but make sure to qualify it as precisely as you can with what you did or you will likely come off as someone a little too overconfident who happened to be lucky on a stock call with well-performing factors (judging by benchmark performance).
Thank you so much for sharing, very helpful. And you are spot on with the long only read. The fund is long bias but this position wasn’t hedged.
I have the deck that I pitched with that has all my work and thesis so will def make sure it does not come across as lucky/overconfident.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but no one is going to take any P&L number you claim seriously, since it's unaudited, you don't have trading discretion, etc.
Plus frankly, people that claim P&L contribution usually try to impress with multi-million dollar numbers. $500k is so small it's almost cute.
I appreciate the heads up, makes a lot of sense.
How can I best go about communicating my performance/achievements?
I appreciate you're eager to impress, but at the intern level, no one is going to expect "performance" nor "achievements". I would focus on listing what tasks your role involved and any hard skills acquired (i.e. are you proficient with Bloomberg, Factset, and such).
Ignore the comment above, that guy is being a dick. This is definitely meaningful. Yes it’s unaudited but so are every PM’s claim when they look for new jobs (only way to semi-audit you is to see your W-2). You just need to be able to speak to it and be able to articulate how you came up with the idea, how you vetted/refined it, what were the risks, what was your upside/downside potential, etc..
I see both sides to this.
On one hand, $500k is a monetary contribution to the fund's performance. OP had what appears to be a well thought out plan for making the trade. I believe the thought process, the trade execution and the profitable aftermath is significant for an intern.
On the other hand, if I were to really be CIO-level picky about this, we wouldn't know all the other ideas the OP suggested that if traded, actually incurred a loss. OP, you a good start with this internship. I'm saying that that's why track record, like 2 to 3 years, is important in this business.
My quick take, put this $500k as a one-liner on your resume but be prepared to talk about it. If I interviewed you, I know I would ask about it.
Thanks for providing perspective on both sides, it’s very helpful. I think that I might include the one liner or not depending on where I am applying (platform size + investment style).
Concur with MMPM as usual.
Honestly, nothing is more cringe worthy than people focusing on specific trades on their resume. How am I supposed to diligence if you were right or got lucky?
Show me skills and process. I can extrapolate from that to expecting good outcomes.
I can’t go backwards from good outcomes to skill/process.
Thanks for sharing, saved me from being one of those cringy candidates in the recruiting process
I agree with the comments above. Unless you put on the big short, just keep in mind that you are being hired to provide support on the research side as a junior analyst -- not to generate PnL. Therefore, it's much more important for you to showcase all of the great things that you did on the research side over the summer. For me, I would much rather hear about the seven names that you worked on, what you did on each, why you think those did not make it into the portfolio, what you could have done more of on the research side to gain more conviction, etc. In addition, be mindful that all funds don't invest the same stylistically. Therefore, talking about an earnings beat could be attractive to some but a turn off for others -- whereas, showcasing your ability to do great research is universal.
Comment is gold, thanks for sharing. I’ll make sure to focus on process/research side of things instead, the “big short” will eventually come.
To be honest, it's incredibly rare for any PM to trade on an intern's idea unless he was already thinking about that trade already. No offense, but anyone reading your resume would find it hard to believe a part-time intern knows enough to suggest a good idea that someone else on your team hasn't already thought of. (And you mention 40% overnight return? Either you had inside info or else you simply got lucky. Very hard to believe an intern spotted an opportunity like that which every other hedge fund in the world missed.) No offense, but anyone reading your resume would think you're exaggerating to take credit for the idea. To be honest, if I saw a resume of an intern claiming credit for a 40% overnight trade, I'd instantly reject that resume. I would not put that on my resume if I were you.
But assuming it really did happen the way you describe, then that means the PM views you as credible enough to trade on your ideas, which would guarantee an excellent return offer.
No offense taken, I get what you are saying and that the trade sounds too good to be true. I appreciate your perspective.
I did not have any inside info, if I did, our position would have been much larger than 3% of our AUM.
I can tell you I was at least expecting a 20% move out of the stock not a 40% move so you can call that luck for sure. The stock re-rated from 5.5x EV/R to 8x (software stock).
I DMed you the 4 pager that summarizes my pitch
I'd be hesitant to hire an intern that believes he's already a profitable analyst/PM. That shows a lack of humbleness.
If you want to talk about a track record, I'd prefer seeing that you managed your small PA positively the last 12-24 months.
I appreciate your insight big time.
I am not really trying to paint myself as a profitable PM/Analyst, I am just trying to figure out how I can communicate what I got out of my internship and the type of experience I gained.
I def agree with you on the humble part. My goal is to be a coachable or moldable intern/analyst.
Said differently, +120bps (5%) of total year P&L was attributable to the idea you were attached to. By the way, the universe of funds that would find this idea cool (putting 3% of NAV into a same day earnings trade where apparently the r/r was so skewed you got +40% on an upside surprise), is small.
This is a pretty good way to put it.
I also totally understand your second point, the last thing I want to do is talk about this specific trade as if it was something life-changing lol.
I disagree with some of the things said on this thread. If you want to be successful in this business you should always have in mind how much you contribute to the bottom line. So having that mental math is crucial if the PnL attribution is not that clear cut. That being said 500k is almost negligible, even more so since you didn't make the calls.
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