Betsi Hill, Co Director of the Hawk Center for Investment Analysis and former buy-side and sell-side credit analyst recently met with a group of CMC members to talk about her career, the credit research role, and credit-related job opportunities for undergraduates. Betsi also described the Hawk Center's Applied Security Analysis Program and the benefits to participating students from its advanced training. The slides Betsi used are attached and you can watch a recording of the session here.

Simon Bizien, a CMC and ASAP alum (’15), and an equity research analyst with Invesco recently met with a group of CMC and ASAP students to talk about what he does as a buy-side analyst several years into his career. He touched on topics including how he originally broke into the business, what he did as a research associate with Janus Henderson, and why and how he moved on to his current position with Invesco. He also discussed idea generation, his research process, and an example of one of his ideas. You can watch a recording of the session here.

We added three new readings to supplement the company analysis training session - found on the For Members>Resource Guide page of the webiste at the LINK TO TRAINING SESSION READINGS.

• Analyzing a Company – The Basics (Ch. 6) discusses evaluating the growth prospects, profitability, financial health, and risk of companies.
• The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy reviews how analyzing the structure of an industry can help you understand what’s influencing company profitability and identifying trends in the competitive forces can help you anticipate changes in profitability.
• What Makes a Moat describes the concept of economic moats (structural barriers that protect companies from competition) and reviews Morningstar’s classification of moat sources: intangible assets, cost advantages, switching costs, network effects, and efficient scale.

Finally, UW-ASAP alum Andrew Lane, a Morningstar strategist recently met with the 1^st year ASAP students to discuss the Morningstar Moat framework for analyzing companies. A video of Andrew’s talk is here.

Five CMC alumni offered career advice to club members in a recent videoconference. The speakers included: Zak Kavajecz – Associate Research Analyst at EAM Investors, an institutional fund manager specializing in small and micro cap international stocks in San Diego; Aaron Hizmi – Equity Research Analyst at T. Rowe Price, a large mutual fund complex in Baltimore; Sam Pickett – Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse, a bulge bracket investment bank in New York City; Joey Hoffmann – Analyst at Camber Capital Management, a healthcare-focused hedge fund in Boston; and Matt Tomczyk – Corporate Credit Analyst at Northwestern Mutual Investment, a large insurance company in Milwaukee. Topics covered included descriptions of their firm and job, how they approached the job search process, and other career advice. You can watch a recording of the session here.