Alpha or Alea: The Absolute Role of Luck

Alea is the latin term for a game of dice / gamble / luck. I am using this term to demonstrate the role that luck plays in life more broadly, and also in the HF space.

I'm an immigrant to the US. I originally moved here for college purely to pursue a career in HF. I was a little too smart to jump head straight into finance, so I chose CS as my major because after hearing how hard breaking into HF out of college is, I thought I can always fall back on my major if the recruiting gets impossible.

I joined an absolute non-target for finance, which happens to be a target for CS. I did not know the concept of target/non-target until after I came into this country and was introduced to this forum. My morale was shattered, how could I have not researched this beforehand? I thought to myself.

Regardless, I kept on persisting. As soon as I realized that my college was a lost cause for IB recruiting let alone HF, I took a gamble. I put all the chips on HF and started to overcompensate for the lack of brand name my college gives me like all non-target students do.

I created a portfolio, drafted pitches ranging from Long, Special Sits & Shorts all of which outperformed the S&P. Some barely, some by a decent margin and some by a superior margin. The Alpha & Alea worked in my favor as I went on to land 3 buy-side internships - Two at $50M funds, one at >$1B fund.

Three summers were now gone, none of these firms were hiring FT. Now came the hardest part, given my Visa status, as immigrant monkeys here would know I'd have to find an employer before the 60 day period of graduation. There was no summer left, so I tried desperately to find the final opportunity that would convert into FT.

I started reaching out to people and firms before I even hit the desk of my last internship, so this was 1.5 years graduation. Given the performance of my write-ups and the resume I've created, I had the privilege of interviewing at great firms, meet absolute legends on the buy-side, but for some reason nothing materialized.

I was offered roles and sometimes promise of roles just for them to do a complete 180, had my will broken so many times I've lost count. Why do they do this? What do they even gain by leading on a 20 yr old? I thought to myself.

Went on a downward spiral. The bottom of a 100 proof was my best friend, put on a shit ton of weight, this felt like the absolute bottom of my life and kept getting worse as graduation neared.

The stock write-ups and their good performance never stopped. At this point, my passion for investing felt more like rolling through the motions. What was the use of all these great, well times pitches when no one even wants to hire me.

I've had people on the buy-side laugh at me as soon as I mentioned the name of my college. The calls were usually going well, until the other side asked what school I go to. After that they would either laugh at me, or there would be a tone of contempt on the other side, sometimes they would outright hang up.

Cold turkey would stare me dead in the eye, each bad call and rejection email turned into liquid courage to get me through one more application, one more call. There had to be someone who wanted to give me a chance right?

Nope, no luck. I was infinitely close to giving up and applying for a SDE role, after all, how bad can it be? Better wlb and lower pay, but something was better than nothing. Sure, I would be miserable, depressed and will probably be attending AAs before I'm 25, but it was better than being unemployed.

I haven't slept peacefully for a year at this point, the whole process was so demoralizing. The voice inside my head said, 'Was there a lack of SDE roles in your country? What was the point of coming all the way to the US just to be another code junkie?'

And I agree, why did I come all the way here to settle for something that would have been possible anywhere in the world. The land of opportunities felt didn't feel like it, the most meritocratic side of finance abandoned me based on immutable characteristics.

That's when it happened. As I was rolling through the motions yet another day, I had apparently sent an email to a PM. I didn't even realize it, because after ~3k cold emails, you don't remember the nuances of everything you send.

We talked for a week, the PM took an immediate liking to me he said, and that was it. Before I knew it, I joined a >$100M L/S HF. I was doubly lucky because my PM was great, he is transparent, was willing to teach me the ropes, and he was damn good at his job.

The broader markets are melting right now and we are still up YTD. Our LPs just so happen to be people who are familiar with this line of work so we don't have to babysit them through every drawdown.

Life has been great, I'm living my dream, learning a ton. I don't drink like I use to, and I'm happy for the first time in a long time. Now that I look back on it, how would I describe my journey?

I'm not an inspiration to any youngin' trying to break into the HF world, not by a long shot. Am I skilled? Am I good at what I do? Sure, I won't deny it. But I was at the right place at the right time. Think about it, what are the odds there was a PM looking to hire someone at the exact moment I sent out an email?

In my PM's own words, he interviewed a lot of experienced professionals but apparently he didn't find the passion/spark in them that he did in me. That is high praise coming from someone of his caliber, but I wonder what would have happened if I never sent that one email, or if was a little too early or little too late.

Landing the role aside, what are the odds my PM was also good and we were able to survive, let alone perform given the current volatility? My seat is safe for the time being.

I won't shy away from admitting the role of luck in this journey. Will this be the experience of every student who wants a HF role out of college? Absolutely not, the last few months feel like a fever dream, even I couldn't have imagined this happening over half a year ago.

But, it doesn't hurt to keep trying. My advice to the students here would be to keep trying, what have you got to lose? If I had completely stopped, I would have never been here. It just so happened that I lucked out right before I gave up.

Like a wise man once said: You can have talent the size of an ocean, but you need a raindrop's worth of luck.

Alea, my friends. Sometimes, that's all there is to it.