How can you be a successful healthcare analyst without having a medical background?
I am currently a college student and have had dreams of pursuing a career at a L/S equity hedge fund for awhile now. I am a firm believer in that you have to be truly interested in the sector you are covering, or else the hours and stress will just be miserable. I have recently become interested in the healthcare sector after reading about all the people who have crushed it this year in biotech, and this led me to wonder:
Is it possible for a non-medical background person to become a successful analyst in healthcare? The reason I ask is because when it comes down to really understanding business models, a finance major that then went on to do the 2+2 path will never understand a biopharma or a biotech company better than someone who went to medical school or was on track to being a doctor. However, I know that some of the most successful PM's in the industry do not have medical backgrounds, so I am curious how they learn to think about these businesses without having that extensive knowledge.
TLDR: Am I wrong for saying that any MD candidate who ultimately wants to go into finance will always be able to understand the healthcare companies better than those who did banking after majoring in finance? If true, how do non-medical background people succeed in healthcare investing?
Thanks everyone and happy holidays!
Bump
Yes you are wrong. Next question
so you are saying that a finance major who did the 2+2 path will be able to better understand which drug will be able to treat a rare disease more effectively than someone who went to medical school?
Healthcare is so much more than Drug X is going to be better at fighting Disease Y.
and why do you think having a medical background would be essential when not even the people developing the drugs know for sure if they will be effective
Yes u can be better than medical background guy but goodluck getting credit for it.
You’re also overestimating how much knowledge ppl in med school have. It’s in inch deep and a mile wide. Anyone with a basic understanding of science can pick up the pathophys of a disease and the major drug classes in under 2 days.
Not saying this is all there is to m la of said dx but med students (medical doctors as well) typically only know this level of understanding unless there disease)
I’m tripping.. lot of typos
Very interesting
knowledge nowadays doesn't mean much with GPT at your fingerprint
I know a couple of great jockeys who have never been horses and are humans from birth
I’ll answer this seriously. Yes, it’s possible, but it’s not as common. There’s a bigger technical moat the closer you get to pure trial analysis. Why? It’s a complex, data driven exercise. You usually have a set of precedents to compare an asset to, and you need to probability adjust for the data you have, the data you don’t, and the data you could never have before a catalyst to set expectations. That work is usually dense, and someone who hasn’t spent significant time reading, writing, or debating scientific literature will likely find it daunting.
That said, it really is still a data exercise. If you’re a voracious reader and comfortable building a knowledge base in something unfamiliar, you can absolutely succeed.
Will it take more time than for someone who doesn’t need to learn a disease pathway before understanding how a drug could work? Yes. But plenty of PhDs/MD's who succeed in this job do so less because of the degree and more because they’ve developed strong self directed learning habits and are willing to engage. In my opinion, a pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics textbook, high school level statistics, and a lot of will can take you very far.
Getting someone to give you a shot is a different story, and unfortunately not well within your control. The way I see this most often occur is those with undergrad degrees in a STEM field are usually given a chance as juniors to model for those running risk, they either graduate into more responsibility or are seen as permanent support before bouncing around/pivoting into something else.
this is extremely helpful. Thank you very much for your insight
that's what you pay sellside ER for
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