What to do/learn about with 3 months free time before FT for HF prep?

Incoming SA at top EB Rx and interested in HF career (London). I graduate next year early and will have 3 months ish free time. What would you recommend I do in this time to better myself for a HF career? I know a lot of people say just to chill which I intend to do a bit of but also I won't ever have this much free time to learn/read about stuff, and I feel like I got into markets late compared to others. Any advice on what to do would be appreciated if you could go back and have this time available. Try and get an internship somewhere? Or relax and delve deep into markets and read various investing books? Thanks.

11 Comments
 

Apply to any funds that interest you out of school. If you’re into distressed / rx type investing, read Moyer and Gatto. 

 

Probs FT more so I doubt they’d bother having you intern bc you’re really useless for months when starting at almost any new fund until you learn the process / nuance of the fund 

 

Is the read investing books advice (other than Moyer) even good advice?

 

I mean because for HF recruiting and succeeding in the career its far more about actually being good and knowing the markets/having good ideas vs IB/PE where you just need to grind it out for the most part. I'm interested in HF industry but I feel like I started late in terms of keeping up with the markets compared to some people I know, and subsequently don't know enough/have enough interesting ideas compared to them. Therefore I was thinking if I used that free time to catch up knowledge wise it would be decently high yield

 

Your roadmap is very dependent on what style of investing and product you're interested in to be honest. For some stuff, you need to read, for others you need to model out stocks and figure out what's going to move it in the next 3 months.

Also, unless the people you know have actual, legit HF experience, they don't really know anything that puts them ahead of you in any real way. Alot of undergrads and sellsiders fundamentally misunderstand how stocks/products trade and just keep doing the same, mediocre biz analysis they've been doing for their student funds which have no real edge. You aren't really behind since they'll have to unlearn most of what they think they know if they want to work in markets.

 
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I’m telling you as someone who is about a decade further down the line, it’s highly unlikely you’re going to go somewhere for 3 months that’s going to provide you with anything of value outside of a name on a resume. There’s value in that but your EB Rx experience is going to open more doors than some no-name HF. If you want to cos-play analyst for the last open 3 months of your young life then go ahead but I’d strongly advise you to just chill out, read, and work on stuff you want to vs. trying to jam in some likely low-value internship.

 

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