week in the life of a Hedge Fund analyst.....

This sort of depends on the strategy and internal structure of your fund. My experience has been in the deep value/activist side of the equation, in which I believe the research process is quite similar to that of a long/short fund, and not entirely different than any other sort of fundamentals-focused investment vehicle. In this instance, your entire life will be a mix of:

1) Reading through large stacks of SEC filings, analyst reports, news and economic data

2) Chatting with target company management. Often this includes traveling out to the company's headquarters.

3) Attending shareholder meetings and industry conferences

4) Most hedge funds have a daily or weekly strategy meeting which you will have to attend. These are fun, because it's when the intelligence and ambition of your colleagues are most on display. This can really get your blood pumping, if you're authentically into this stuff.

5) "Special" internal strategy meetings involving individual deals, which could involve a target company or could involve strategic alternatives for the hedge fund itself.

6) Putting all of this information into a model, making the model perfect. Occasionally presentations are required for various purposes, but it is not a main focus, generally. Some funds require full writeups on each investment (which I prefer to do, because it helps gather my thoughts and, i find, it is easier to catch any logical lapses when you have to write everything down). Other funds will just let you show a model and tell the qualitative side verbally, or in a bulleted email.

7) Depending on the fund, you might have to assist in the marketing process, including putting together investor presentations and assisting with the creation of investor letters, assembling portfolio data, etc. You might also have to meet with potential or existing investors, in your office or somewhere else, to attract or retain capital for the fund.

8) Due diligence is significantly more investigative in a hedge fund than in a bank (i think -- i have never worked in a bank), insofar as you will be on the phone frequently, with various people that you would never expect could be useful, trying to figure out the value of things that are difficult to pin down. For example, I once spoke with numerous retired park rangers living in the forest in PA to try and get a better sense of the size, quality, and value of a company's 80,000 acres of timberland holdings in that area. In another instance, I spoke with numerous geologists specializing in the appalachian basin's deep devonian shale to try and get some data points to determine the value of an undrilled patch of natural gas acreage that a completely non-oil related company owned. This stuff is always fun.

Hope this was useful.