First week of JHU Equity Analyst Team

When I was still a Quant master student at Rutgers Business School last December, I knew that Carey Business School was about to launch a high-power research team named Equity Analyst Team.  It really made me feel thrilled that I could be part of the team 4 months later.  Now I am a first-year MSF student at the Johns Hopkins University and last week was my first week working full-time with the other 6 team members.

When the team president, Saliq Khan, found me at the mid of March and talked to me about the team, he emphasized many times that this is not a student club, which you can pay for the ticket and get on board.  He mentioned “Six of us are interviewed, hand-picked and committed for a 12-months work load.  We study as a group and work as a firm”.  Couple weeks ago when I was chatting with Chang Liu about the team, the president of the JHU Finance Club as well as a member of the team. He responded with a charming smile, ”You’re gonna miss your days right now”.  The first sentence that jumped into my mind is: What? Are you serious?

After one week’s work, I confirm that Chang was not joking.  I don’t remember when last time that I woke up at 6:30 was.  But I’ll continue doing so from now on. Morning conference is not new to me.  Back to my days of internships at Securities Institution, I’d already got used to it.  But the difference right now is everyone needs to speak quite a lot during our morning conference call.  If you don’t do enough homework, certainly you cannot contribute enough.  Also you need to prepare for other members’ friendly challenges.  On Saturday’s meeting, we walked through different components of fundamental analysis and every member brought their unique insights about their parts. To learn and to share is always a joy!

As a new comer of the team, I realized that I need to work really hard to catch up with other fellows. Sometimes I felt my points of view sounded naïve and lack of experience. The other members helped and encouraged me all the time. And I have to admit, despite the high-demanding work load, our working environment is really fun. Hussain is definitely the most hilarious person and our two female members---Lorena and Soujianya are really attractive, or increasingly attractive according to Hussain. J

I’m feeling lucky that I can be involved in this family and do my humble contributions to it. I firmly believe that when we look back this December, we could proudly say we didn’t waste our time and all the efforts were worthwhile.

"Keep it up, Lin."   

- Lin