Betsi Hill, corporate bond expert and Co-Director of the Hawk Center for Investment Analysis, recently held an online tutorial on understanding bond covenants and documentation. Understanding the importance of covenants in analyzing corporate bonds will be a significant differentiator for you relative to other undergraduates not only if you pursue a career in corporate credit research, but also if you are interviewing for an equity research role. A solid understanding of the capital structure will make you a better analyst.

Greetings Capital Management Club (CMC) alumni. The coronavirus pandemic, UW's move to remote learning, and incredibly volatile markets presented unique challenges to members during the 2019-2020 academic year. By moving regular meetings and training sessions online with Zoom, the executive board maintained the momentum built in the Fall semester and the club ended the year with a record number of Portfolio Analysts. The Capital Management Club News & Notes (volume 2) below highlights club activities during the year.

We recorded the slides for the investment thesis and valuation training session so you can watch in advance of the meeting on Tuesday. You can watch the presentation here – slides used are attached. There are additional valuation readings in the Research Readings folder on the website here.

Tuesday night we’ll start with a high-level discussion of key concepts and any questions you have. Then, two portfolio analysts will demonstrate stock pitches to give you a clear understanding of what we’re looking for at the Associate Member Pitch Day on April 21^st. As a reminder, the current teams are here.

A video of the latest training session is here and slides are attached.

During the session we reviewed where you can find information in Fqactset and elsewhere to help you understand how a company operates and evaluate the comeptitive landscape and trends in company financial reports.

We then discussed techniques professionals use to efficiently research companies effectively filtering through the noise to identify key drivers of the stocks.

We also discussed how examining the distribution of expectations for the key drivers can supplement our research and help more clearly define the key tension points for a stock, i.e. the issues where bulls and bears disagree. By focusing our analysis and field research on these tension points, we can position ourselves to develop a view on the stock, effectively aligning with the optimistic or pessimistic case for the stock.

Finally, we discussed how our views are translated into financial forecasts that are, relative to consensus forecasts, directionally consistent with how we expect the tension points to resolve.  

To supplement your own research, we created folders here for each of the stock teams containing recent Wall Street research notes and at least one detailed financial models. These should help you estimate market expectations, at least as reflected in sell-side views. There is also a template you can use to start to put together your presentations for the April 21 Associate Member Pitch Day. Zoom, Microsoft-Teams, or Googlehangouts are relatively easy apps you can use to connect and work on the presentations together.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to Dan or the Portfolio Analyst working with your team if you have any questions.