What can I do to gain finance experience to apply for internships?

Hi, I am a rising sophomore at Duke, currently have a 3.71 GPA, and my major is undeclared right now. When I do declare, I plan for it to be a double major in Mathematics/Economics finance concentration. My goal is to get a sales and trading internship next summer (2011, I will be a rising junior). I have been reading about what makes a good candidate, and prior finance experience seems to be at the top of the list. Unfortunately, I have no prior finance experience.

Is there anything I can do to change this and get finance experience between now and when I will have to apply for internships? Is there anything else (besides networking) I can do to make myself a better internship applicant?

thanks for any responses

2 Comments
 

obviously read the books...but aside from that...do you have any personal portfolio experience? build and manage a portfolio and document your strategies, beat your target index etc. and you will thus gain credibility within an interview. Another strategy, hard as fuck to actually complete, is round up investors (fund raising to benefit some sort of charity) to do "mock" funding in that you will lock in a said contribution from each and only call upon if your portfolio experiences gains at the end of your contractual term. A grad student at my university did this and it worked out quite well. All proceeds go to charity of course but it is by far the best experience before you actually have real money.

 

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