Q&A: HF out of undergrad, ~5 years later

I had interned with two hedge funds during undergrad that at least demonstrated I had a vested interest in the L/S & public markets space. That at least "proved" I was devoted to wanting to do public equities investing, but I think having relevant internship experience is important. Hedge funds largely don't have the infrastructure required to train junior investment professionals, with the exception of Citadel/P72. Even Millennium has outsourced that training responsibility to UBS equity research... ideally training students out of u/g with the idea that they move to Millennium after 2-3 yrs in a formal sell-side program.

The networking is different in that you have to show you can add value for a fund, versus IB I found it more meticulous... e.g. grabbing coffee and trying to demonstrate interest like you would tour a college campus. Hedge funds simply want to know 1) how you think / your thought process and 2) can you model effectively? What separated me in my networking was that I had developed 3 written pitches and models I was sending to most funds, so they at least had a taste for some level of work product and thought process. You wouldn't send a giant CIP to a bank in hopes that you show your ability to pitch deals to that point.

If you're dead set on doing public equities I think the more experience you can get earlier is always better. I think some on the site may disagree and suggest that going through a structured, formal training program in sell-side banking or research is inherently more valuable but I think that only applies to junior professionals who are uncertain of where they want to be in that next role.

A part of my entire edge as a young investor is that I've spent > 4 years already in a buy-side public equities seat, where most peers my age have spent < 2 years. A lot has occurred in public markets since then and developing a "rapport" with how stocks trade, how companies operate, and just identifying inflection points across markets takes time. I think if you were fully certain public equities was the path you wanted to go down, I think the best setup for anyone is to get there as soon as you can. You're thrown into the fire quickly and forced to learn and adapt. Citadel / P72 likely have the steepest learning curves out of any FT U/G job you can get so I'd say go for it.

Have my own investments that were grandfathered in... for lack of better word. I had single stock holdings in my PA when I joined the fund that I now need approval to trade, so I don't. I can freely trade ETFs within our compliance guidelines, but also don't do a ton here. Made some seriously good derivative ETF bets in the last few months that I took profits for and rolled into the fund.

I can't really trade freely in my own PA so I don't bother, but I own a % of the fund (GP & LP) so in a way I have a "co-" track record to some degree.

Well I decided to move out of u/g, so frankly as early as possible. I knew I wanted to do L/S. Not much more I can really add to the answer than, if you're sure you want to be in the HF seat, as mentioned above the earlier you can get there the better. I largely think HF PM's tend to want someone with limited public markets exposure as they can mold them, particularly at the junior level. The more senior you get the more onus there is to drive PnL at meaningful levels, from both your own perspective and the PM's. You also come in with a completely different set of skills and style that may differ from the PM you're joining, so you come in at a slight disadvantage having to re-learn a new process. Not a bad thing and can be LT beneficial in becoming a well-rounded investor, but the longer you wait to get into the seat the longer you're depriving yourself of the experience. Just my 2 cents.

HH route makes sense but truly depends on the fund. Tons of recruiters are aiming to fill associate/analyst spots at large pods all the time. If you want to do go the single manager route you may need to do the pitch route, or work it via your own network.

1) I've definitely gotten quicker. Having joined out of undergrad w/ no FT modeling experience, I'm sure my model turnover was probably double what it is today. That one just took time to get quicker at knowing what to model for, what my PM found important, his own / my own views on which KPIs and drivers to focus on. I think a large inefficiency is trying to do too much too soon. As a generalist we need to just get a mold and feel for the company, its drivers, and how it generates & allocates cash. I can dig deeper once we have that framework modeled out and go the extra mile (we do) in getting the nitty gritty down.. i.e. getting RevPAR and ADR data for my hotel stocks, getting OTA & credit card data for BKNG/EXPE, tracking PMIs and implementing in my industrials names. Too much time can be spent on that (it's important as an analyst, but takes longer). The upfront important stuff for my PM to make an investment decision just needs to be the top 3 things that matter to that stock. So getting there faster is an efficiency.

2) Ha, you're asking that question like there's no value in shorting (you may not have intended me to take it this way). They don't drag on returns and I'd argue in this market ESPECIALLY if you look at Citadel's YTD returns that's where I'd bet all of Melvin / Tiger's redemptions will flow to. Citadel wasn't designed to outperform in massive bull markets, it was meant to drastically outperform in downturns. That all said, the skillset for shorting is tricky. My view on short selling is there's a couple ways to do it effectively: in pod/multi form you are looking for relative underperformers within a sub-vertical or sector focus. Developing a sector expertise is massively important to being a strong short seller in this case. In other short selling tactics, guys are looking to uncover potential catalyst-driven shorts. Takes a lot more time but getting close to sectors also enhances this type. And then there's just simple inverse shorting/mean reversion: i.e. you think a stock is overvalued or its estimates are too high for XYZ reason. Across all of these sub-strategies within short selling, it's essentially gaining deeper understanding of business drivers, learning sectors, finding read-throughs. Nothing that spectacular I have to share here but this is why I'm not Jim Chanos.

3) I think the best PMs have a few qualities. Outside of sheer intellectual horsepower, I'd add mentorship is huge especially at early levels. Breeding investors is not an easy task and many analysts can go astray if they only have one mindset. I think adaptability or flexibility is huge - being able to emotionally detach from single securities and trade on both the long & short side is a major positive that most don't discuss. Tons of PMs have their stocks they love and only go long but never short, and vice versa. Then lastly, more about risk management. You mention alpha generation but what about alpha protection? What happens when the market is down 20%? How does the PM respond, both in managing the book but also emotionally? All stuff to consider.

No worries. I don't do much TAM analyses because I think they're worthless but yes, bottoms up as much as possible. Unit x price at base level but then moreover peeling back geographies, product lines, product-specific PnL... and then using alternative data sources, some of which available to retail investors but then others not so much. Correlating/backing into estimates using credit card data, using RevPAR and room night assumptions for hotels, state gaming level data for GGR on casinos, chemical pricing and capacity assumptions via Platts, stuff like that.

As a college student no one is expecting you to have that level of access so wouldn't worry too much there. But think wherever you can get creative in your modeling is always a plus.

1) The way we're structured was not that I was necessarily serving any of the senior analysts above me, but moreso to be directly under the PM. At first he gave me a sleeve of names, either names he was close to but hadn't refreshed the model or entirely new names. I started pitching about a year in, typically names outside of his universe and with a full-written thesis attached. Expectation was first to get modeling and get the aggregate fund's breadth a little bit wider, then second to contribute and grow in contribution. I cover > 75% of the names in portfolio today in some capacity... either my own idea generation or the PM's, w/ coverage passed to me.

2) Took... a while but bear in mind smaller funds are very unstructured in their hiring processes. The reason I am emphasizing this is because smaller funds hire on a need basis. If you reach out in the autumn of your senior year, you may be met with more "no's" because the funds aren't going to make an offer to an analyst who's planning on starting in 9 months. I think the sweet spot (as a senior in u/g) is ~March.. a few months ahead of graduation right when funds can start to see if they need to hire. 2a) Tips for pitches... be thoughtful and accurate. Don't pitch a tech stock to an energy fund. Know your audience but better yet know their strategy, read their investment filings and brochures, even just to ensure it's a fund/strategy you'd be interested in. Grade A way to be ignored is by doing tons of work to develop a well thought-out pitch, but then pitch it to the wrong group... (e.g. pitching a short to a LO fund). And then also not necessary but out of consensus pitches tend to work better. You see 10 analysts have buy ratings, none with hold/sell, figure out why it's a short and if that's a viable thesis. Ballsy but look at the 13-F of whom you're pitching and pitch one of their longs as a short, good way to get their attention.

3) I was pretty straight forward. I.e. "Hi XYZ, I've interned here here and here, and i'm very interested in X fund. I'd love to hear more about your experiences doing Y and how you got to X fund, let me know if there's a time convenient.. also, attached a resume and two stock pitches for your reference." Something along those lines.. better templates out there than that ^ lol 

Depends. Very flexible so gross/net can move around a ton and with it do # of positions. Have run max net long (> 90%) and net short during periods of my tenure so far. On average it's > 15 longs and > 10 shorts, but no more than 40-50 on either side of the book. 

Process for idea generation to addition in the portfolio is a bit more straightforward than I've seen at other funds. PM wants to know 1) what the business is/does if he doesn't already, 2) why consensus is wrong, 3) where I could be wrong and 4) how and when you get paid. I try to narrow that down to a brief, few-paragraphs in an email with visuals and explanations where applicable - I do know other funds where it's almost PE-style; you write up an entire pitch deck diving into the weeds of a stock and explaining everything from A to Z, with risk cases and so on. The entire premise is to get it down to what's important, the company's 8th largest supplier probably isn't a needle mover for the PM's process... but should add it's something as an analyst you should know as a "just in case" it matters. Got my first idea into the book roughly 9 months after I started. It wasn't a good idea.

Won't give too much away on comp but have low-mid single digits % of the GP. Base was in-line early on with junior IB salaries and then started to ramp up more acutely in the later years. This varies widely at other SM shops. It didn't take anything for me to get equity, it was a tiny % when I started to get a taste and incentivize my work flow and grew as my responsibility/contribution grew. On a go-forward I think it's just largely a function of sheer PnL attributable to myself. I started tracking it in my 2nd year where I could highlight trades I suggested or positioning into earnings that I advised and tied what trades were made as a result, more or less backing into a rough PnL. Then there's obviously the names I have full ownership over and their performance. Bonus is % of PnL + any additional cash $ he wants to pay me.

Tough to say. There are also pure commodities HF out there. I am not that close to physical space but it seems to be more trading / quantitative heavy. So either focus on trading and try to find pitches that way, or potentially look at adding quantitative degrees. Apologies I cannot be of more help.

1) Again, pitches. Think that's the best way to differentiate yourself and also highlight worthwhile investment thought process to a potential fund willing to hire you. 

2) This is tough. MSF tends to be more quantitative in nature, and are also typically 1 year programs. Would depend on the coursework. MBA's definitely work and can be used extensively for finance roles, but are less common in HF than say PE/IB. MBA route can definitely work, though! Just depends on the school... i.e. Columbia Value Investing program tends to place better out of all MBA's for HF.

3) DM me, have a book list can suggest. Would read all the Buffett letters, Einhorn's book, Howard Marks, etc. There's tons of good investment-process related material out there but I have a list I can share offline

I think Intelligent Investor albeit dry and dated is just a great read for basic fundamental value investing. A lot of those principles apply today and are especially important to recognize during the tech bubble that's popped/been popping since Dec '21. The world is more cyclical than everyone realizes or thinks.

I like the Buffett stuff, Mastering the Market Cycle by Howard Marks, Hedge Fund Market Wizards, More Money than God, I mean even Principles has some good teachings in it. 

Don't have any like... teaching material books that in my view I know of that are worth reading... if that's what you're asking for.

I will say going from SM to MM is easier than the other way around. Pods are all structured in a way that getting deep on names and then trading them in a tighter, narrower, and quicker framework is the method. SM can take a variety of different approaches, are smaller by nature, and have wider teams covering broad sectors, so therefore the thinking is different. Ultimately a beta-neutral strategy is trying to identify sentiment/positioning into earnings prints, peeling back what will be important / catalyze the print, and then managing a book accordingly. If you had a view that NFLX wasn't going to be as bad as expected you perhaps went long into their print but matched it with META short, which you expected to be worse on a relative basis. Therefore you're capturing alpha in between NFLX outperformance (we'll see today). It's a lot of pair trading. SM strategies tend to take the view of 6-24 months and say: where is consensus wrong, where are we headed, what's going to change in that time frame and then identifying the mispriced securities according to that framework. Less relative trading or print setups, more "hey I think the unit economics on this grocery store are going to dramatically change because of this new regulation on meat packaging, what does that do to KR estimates?"

Stupid example towards the end but you get my point. I don't think the MM experience PRECLUDES you from the SM framework and frankly the MM analysts are some of the sharper, deeper guys on single stocks out there. Just a different way of playing the same game.

We have a COO who acts as our risk management person. She handles almost all of our risk parameters and notifies our PM when we're sitting close to thresholds on gross/net exposures. I'm really not that close to this process and don't have to worry about it as an analyst so I'm probably the wrong person to ask.

She's probably very useful and a large part of why we aren't getting smoked like other funds with horrible risk management practices (see Melvin above). We stick to our process and manage risk according to our original offerings documents; it's not "sexy" but we aren't naked short selling securities that have > 25% of the float shorted. Imagine that's in part due to our COO, but maybe it's my PM just not being a Neanderthal.

I don't interact in terms of my own process all that frequently with our "risk" team so I can't contribute as much as I'm sure my PM would be able to. I think comp is quite reasonable and at some SM I know they also have % equity in the fund as well. And the work-life balance seems incredible.

1) I'll answer this in the context of the modeling test I had to do to land the job. 3 statement + DCF I think is the bare minimum. Whatever you can do to show a well-thought out process to arrive at your assumptions would be great, but understood if you're limited by resources. I know some funds aren't DCF heavy but it can't hurt to plug in some more "top-down" growth assumptions over a 10-year framework, and while no MM is using a DCF to succumb to a valuation I would imagine plenty of SM, value OR growth are. I mean Tiger was probably doing 10+ year DCF's with a risk-free rate of 0.5% and LT terminal growth of > 5%. Don't use those as your assumptions lol, but definitely worth including. I prefer quantitative metrics but qualitative is important, too. I'm also of the mindset anything qualitative (market share, capital allocation) can be quantified to some degree.

2) I am neutral on people moving. There's so much more to making a jump in careers/jobs than people tend to allude to on this site. Do you have a s/o? Do you have family you care about? End all be all everyone has a different taste for making jumps and given how junior we both are, I tend to heir on the side of being in the seat you stand to learn the most from. For my own premises, and hopefully this helps how I think through my own career prospects, but I have a giant coverage list (> 80 stocks) across sectors of which ~75% I am "close to" (i.e. able to trade and make suggestions on at any given time), with the other 25% being largely model maintenance on a quarterly basis, less plugged into recent performance, etc. I haven't met any PMs at other funds, either SM or MM, that are smarter than mine. Our performance has been top notch and I have equity in the fund. I may be slightly underpaid at the base level but am very well compensated for my age group, perhaps in-line/slightly below with ~HF analysts 2-3 yrs my senior who are at shops but did the banking prior. I am quite senior in the hierarchy at our fund and have a decent amount of autonomy. I'm in a tier 1 city, but wouldn't hurt to move. Still pretty young, single. Family close. I don't know I'm just rambling there's just a ton that goes into those decisions. Do you like your PM? Do you enjoy the work? Are you paid well? Are you learning? What are your LT goals?

3) 6-24 months, typically on the low end for shorts and high end for longs. Our price targets aren't inherently indicative of anything other than what we think it's worth based on our thesis, and there are multitudes of ways that a stock or security can achieve price and returns outside of our own framework, often times we may not even be aware of. If a stock is up 20% from where we bought it in < 6 months on something OTHER than our thesis playing out, we may take our gains and re-allocate to other more attractive r/r securities in the book if that makes sense. On the contrary if our thesis is taking longer to play out than expected and the stock continues to reflect something we're missing, we may reach a point where a larger discussion on the thesis fallibility is worth having.  

I like Mastering the Mkt Cycle by Marks, Fooling Some People All of the Time by Einhorn, Hedge Fund Mkt Wizards by Schrager (I think). I also just read tons of market structure and history of economics books too. 

What do you think the edge is? Individual level thinking? 

Fair question. I think part of it is forming the right bottoms up and top down view on the 6+ month time horizon. To your point on data/channel checks, yes pods trade it religiously and so therefore intra-quarter as that data comes out it can be tricky. We also don't have extensive resources so we aren't getting all the same data to the extent that Citadel might be. But we're wary of it. It's no reason we invest or short a stock. A lot of our "edge" is either in the trenches of unit economics work and identifying inflection points in business trajectories ahead of the street, or finding mispriced securities within a larger "top-down" theme. We were long the reflation trade from May '20 thru the end of 2021 on the idea that large amounts of stimulus was going to drive substantial inflation over the near term during the midst of a reopening, so we owned tons of commodities. Unit economics work entails stuff you're likely familiar with, but digging into say an auto parts retailer and understanding product line PnL, how that may change with new capital investments in distribution centers, etc.

Crowding is tough and we try to traffic in stocks that are "less crowded." On the short side we tend not to short much stuff with > 10% SI. Just suggests we're already late to that trade if the short interest is fairly high, in my view it then skews r/r negatively as squeeze potential exists.

Sure

Sure.

1) I like Tegus and have used it solely on trial, as with YipIt. We've never/don't use Canalyst, and have previously used Visible Alpha. Tegus is great to get up to speed on in the ins and outs of new sectors, often times we use it on a trial basis or temporarily solely to get up to speed on a new sector. If no new sectors, we tend to limit our usage. YipIt is fine but we've found sell-side credit card data that we already pay for as a function of trading tends to be just as good directionally.

2) Yes. I go through every call/transcript and give updates on each name in my coverage. Those we haven't been involved with in say, > 2 quarters, may be smaller bulleted blurbs on 3-4 major key takeaways, whereas names we're more fully involved in get longer write-ups, thoughts, trading recommendations, etc.

3) Ahh, it's tricky. We have a pretty robust and consistent process here, we look for stocks with misunderstood earnings power in either direction that we think the market is underappreciating and mispricing. To your point, that can vary widely across sectors. My best way to describe how our process works and as mentioned briefly above: it's either a bottoms-up idiosyncratic approach, where we're looking to find names that the market has maybe oversold on fears of earnings being cut much more drastically than what the fundamentals imply. A great example of this was VVV coming out of the pandemic: this company owns and operates oil change stores, but also sells its own private label oil lubricant products. When oil went negative, they were essentially being paid to take on base oil, and then refine it to sell as lubricant. Their raw materials pricing went to $0 (for the case of this example), but miles driven actually held in and so therefore their GM % increased by ~500 bps in the interim, and EPS followed. Now it's probably a short, lol. The top-down secular example would be looking at something like chemical recycling. CPG companies largely need to pay up for higher cost materials, but as oil structurally settles higher as a result of potential implications surrounding the war, the cost parity between virgin and recycled plastic resins narrows, making it much more affordable for PG / CLX to buy recycled resin for their products. They can still go to consumers and charge the same thing, but now the relative hit to GM % isn't as substantial, and they wield pricing power. 

Apologies for the lengthy response, but those are one cyclical and one secular example of how we evaluate investments. I'd say on the latter (secular) that if it doesn't fit with some sort of tangible fundamental change to the financials within ~2 years then we may avoid it as it likely won't drive the stock. I'd just add that it's important to know both the cyclical AND secular stories regarding all companies; industrials all have secular stories albeit occasionally negative, and lots of consumer & tech is more cyclical than people are willing to admit. It all matters.

None of us have it. Case by case, fund by fund. Guys who've done that path likely live and die by the MBA route the same way a CFA guy may say that's the best way to do it. Frankly my view is there's no "best way" and ultimately you can pave your path into HF/AM in a pretty non-linear, unconventional way if you have the chops, smarts, and ambition. It's certainly not frowned upon in the industry but I also don't think it's necessary - think MBA largely best for if you're in a completely non-adjacent industry.. maybe like consulting or something where it allows you the reset button and ability to re-recruit. Plenty of funds hire out of MBA programs but I think it'd be a misnomer for me to sit here and tell you it's a must. No one at my firm has it and only one of us (not me) has their CFA.

Fair question. Would say that outside of the larger multis (P72, Citadel, Millennium, Baly) that it's going to be on a fund-by-fund basis. The funds I interned with in undergrad were more than happy to hold my hand and give me a little nudge in the right direction in terms of my development, so likely would've made for great spots also as a full-time analyst as well. The larger multis will more or less mold you into a pod-shop monkey and make sure you're great at modeling in the first 6 months on the job, so you'll have no concern around development there. 

I think it also partially has to do with what you wanna do: do you like short selling? Do you prefer longer term investing? Do you prefer fast-paced trading? Do you want to be a sector expert or a generalist? These will all help tailor the direction or focus you should be going after. I was interested in all of those roles and would've preferred L/S but was open to LO, just wanted a seat at the table on the public markets side; but I prioritized my efforts towards L/S before I would've deferred to reaching out to LO shops.

Fund size is tough, it's more about the PM and the seat itself. There can likely be funds sub-$250m AUM that may offer great learning experiences albeit in a tiny team. There also might be very strong LO with > $10bn in AUM where the culture is fantastic and it may offer a strong learning experience. It just likely depends on the senior members of the team and what they want out of you as an analyst; so I think size of fund shouldn't really be a parameter when searching for funds. I don't particularly know what "mentality" you're suggesting is what you have; all funds and their analysts require you to update models every quarter, I still do this ~5 years into the seat. The whole process and development of an analyst is that you start from updating and building models for other investors' ideas, learning what makes a strong investment process & thesis, and then trying to apply that framework to generate your own ideas soon thereafter. Even in my internships I found that towards the end the senior investors were curious on my thoughts, even if it was just my own takeaways from the model. 

I think your goals are more than achievable; you're interning in a public equities seat getting what sounds like great experience. I think your goal now should be to come up with 1-2 pitches on your own, build a basic model for them, and then try to send it to a couple funds you think are interesting. I think you should definitely aim for the MM programs, the Point72 academy... the Millennium/UBS program... etc. Those tend to be quite structured and a good way to accelerate the recruiting process. I just think there's seats that you would need to dig up yourself that a fund might not even know they're hiring for (like I did) and wiggle in that way as well. Apologies if this doesn't really answer your question I just don't understand exactly what you're aiming for.

For what it's worth if you WANT to do private equity then that's a wholly different story... modeling seems like a forbidden word on this site and I remember being in undergrad being intimidated by "modeling" and now doing it FT it's not anywhere as bad as it sounded.

Are you in healthcare IB?

Finviz.com has a pretty good tool and screener, as does Gurufocus. I remember using those a decent amount... not sure what undergrad courses you've taken in the space but generally I just try to think about themes forming in the next 12-24 months and moving from there. Based on those themes which equities are mispriced today? If in 18 months we are still seeing massive amounts of inflation, then who wins? What stocks are being priced for rapid deflation? This isn't a great example nor is it advice but it's just meant to challenge your view. Do you think EV adoption is going to go faster or slower than what the media says? Why? Do you think air travel will recover quicker and start cancelling less flights? Why? What happens in 18 months if Biden forgives thousands in student debt? What companies do better as a result? 

The bottoms up approach would then be identifying companies that are 1) cheap, 2) profitable, 3) generate cash and 4) allocate that cash well. So low P/E ratios, high margins, high FCF yields, and either pay a high dividend yield or buy back > 3-4% of their shares per year. That's a great way to screen bottoms up and then try to create a view on the industry. If some random apparel company shows up, what's the view? What do they do? What are the 2-3 main drivers of the business?

This can all be found btw in 10-K/10-Q filings + transcripts + company presentations which you have access to (management company's investor relations website or SEC.gov). I always read filings just to ensure I understand the company's business from the ground up. Then you can start to form a view on where those drivers are headed.

Not overly sensitive, definitely seems like a real issue to grapple with. I don't know the structure of the fund or the team so I can only opine on the details you provided... but that being said multi's have made a much more devoted effort and commitment towards diversity, but yes the industry as a whole tends to be male dominated. There are more 100+ person banks than there are hedge funds. 

Also will preface the response with: as a man in the industry I can't really speak for it how you feel being the sole woman on a team of all men, being the most junior as well potentially creating odd power dynamics; so a lot of what I may say is really speculative.

Couple thoughts:

1) Do you feel as if being the sole woman is the main driver behind the odd team dynamics? Or is it primarily that you are junior, you're young, and so therefore takes some time getting fully comfortable? I would say in my experience I was incredibly shy/tentative to share my views early on knowing that I knew very little, and so therefore it felt a bit lonely and uncomfortable at times. I was the youngest on a small team by a large margin and so not only was I abundantly inexperienced in comparison, I also had little to nothing in common with my co-workers. I made due, but it still took some time to warm up to everyone's perks. I'd also add that public equities in general tend to be a more intellectually challenging space from a cultural perspective, and definitely less social. Less work related happy hours and more intense work environments just from my view (not all will agree though).

2) The talent thing shouldn't be a question yet in my opinion. Everyone goes through bouts of imposter syndrome and especially being in what sounds like a great seat so early on in your career will naturally be intimidating, surrounded by analysts & PM's with years of experience, who also likely took longer than you to reach your current seat when they were starting out. I'd rest my case that being in a HF analyst seat at 23 is a pretty remarkable achievement in and of itself. Your goal now should just be focused on learning and absorbing as much as you can from the smart people around you, regardless of whether or not you want to do HF longer term. Will be invaluable either way.

3) These are probably connected. If there was another woman on your team I'd be willing to bet you'd be less concerned about your ability or talent development as she could act more as a mentor to assure you were headed in the right direction and performing up to par. I also think that if you had a few more years under your belt and started to really excel in the seat you might also say, "who cares about other women on my team? I'm better than most of the men here anyways." The latter being more a guess.

Would wrap and say try not to overthink it, focus on the core job at hand. If in a year or two's time you come away having felt underserved from the gig or the learning experience or the team/culture, there's ways to solve for it. I'd add that part of being successful in the job IS innate ability to invest/trade, but that innate ability in my opinion is only uncovered with years of experience. I think very few analysts in their first few years are just natural-born talents with an instinctual ability to have a high hit rate on stocks. I think there are personalities that can be pre-disposed to success in the industry, but would say that it's a combination of learned development and process as well as having the inner mindset.

1) I did it so I'm biased and would say given your certainty it's definitely worthwhile to go straight to L/S. Some people may knock skipping conventional banking but I'd argue skipping gives you an edge LT as an investor.

2) The resources are abundant. You'll see what I mean when you're there but the amount of paid data resources MMs have is insane. You know every single credit card datapoint that exists within certain brands down to the country, you know where each powerplant in the world driving electricity is and how much power they generate on a daily basis, you track weather data to know where transports are flowing through the country in any given quarter. These might all be wrong examples but meant to highlight the level of data that provides an edge. Having exposure to something like that is pretty remarkable and can teach you what really matters LT. Occasionally the data is wrong / won't matter to a stock's earnings and then you know it's not something worth spending time on, re-allocate your time and resources elsewhere. Other times you'll see that the data is spot on with the corresponding fundamentals and worth analyzing further.