Hello,
I am currently an undergrad student at a non-target. I have a high GPA and a lot of really strong EC's. However, I have been having a lot of trouble getting my first research internship. I wanted to try a new strategy. I was going to cold email as many hedge funds as I can and ask if I can work for free remotely. And in return, if I can do value-added work, I can put the experience on my resume.
My question is, what kind of value can I add as an undergrad? I am in a very competitive student investment fund and I feel comfortable formulating a thesis about a stock and building a 3-statement financial model. But I don't know if my work would be up to standard for a HF. Has anyone done this before? And how should I proposition them that I can do real work and not just be a waste of time for them?
Thanks!
Hey Xohs, I'm the WSO Monkey Bot and I'm here since nobody responded to your topic! Bummer...could just be unlucky but one of these topics will help shed some light:
More suggestions...
Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.
Bump, am also interested.
Bump, also interested. If you don't mind me asking, where do you go to school?
Plz
I would suggest not working for free at any place unless you are somewhat confident that the boss is going to help you now/ in future. If someone thinks you can be useful to them, they should be open to giving you something in return (time/ recommendation/ money). When you go for the initial meeting, showcase your knowledge/ interest. As mentioned elsewhere in the forums, Dastidar's investment book isn't a bad place to start. The level of detail is fine for interviews.... connected flow of thought.
I did this and it worked for me. Cold called/emailed about 300 funds got 4 responses. I had a case study with a macro investment with a quant twist (legit just to show I understood economics and quant theory), and eventually landed an unpaid internship. The guy was incredibly helpful, he was running a small internship program and so I basically just ended up getting lucky (though after 300 emails Idk if you can consider it luck).
I loved the material so I worked through the learning curve incredibly fast. We would call 2-3 times a week for a few hours at a time and talk through finanical theory. I would always spend about 6-7 hours on it after we would hang up, so by the next time we talked I had a lot to ask him about. I was generating about 10-15 strategies a week, as I created more and more eventually some were viable (probably 1/20), now I do about 5-6 a week and one out of two work. He trades strategies I create for him and I get 20% of whatever they make him.
I know this is kind of different for quant than L/S (which I am assuming you are targeting), but I would definitely put a pitch together and start emailing it out. To be honest, it doesn't take much to start writing a pitch, you can teach yourself how to format it very easily by a long google search. A couple tips;
1) I would create a short pitch if you are doing a L/S funds, as those are actually more useful (short books are usually harder to fill). One guy I have talked to said he started with short pitches and has now worked at a short only fund for about 30 years.
1.5) HUSTLE the short pitch. contact ex-employees on linkedin, google map the neighborhood and see if there are neighboring businesses that have anything weird to say. Read the famous slide deck for Kurig for an example of how thorough to be. The better the pitch the more likely someone will take you seriously.
2) avoid larger funds (AUM >2 billion). They usually have larger teams, and HR people. Also people I have talked to at point 72 and 2sigma have told me if someone emails them a stock pitch it gets forwarded to compliance without a response. Smaller firms don't have the same back office and so may be more likely to hear you out. Larger funds do actually have online applications however. I always got weeded out because of low GPA, but always worth a shot on these.
3) keep an open mind. You may be tempted to pass on a couple funds because it isn't exactly what you want to be doing. But please believe me when I tell you you have no idea what you want to be doing. Being picky is only going to hurt you.
4) target anyone with a common thread. I was an athlete so I found other athletes, also my alumni network was huge (though not in HF world), if you were in a frat find other people from that frat. If you are blonde find other blondes etc.
5) Don't give up. If I gave up at 200 emails I would have probably ended up in corp finance.
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