04 December 2012 3:38PM
Congratulations to Max Lipscomb, Jay Kocherlakota, and Jack Schrager for winning the the 2012 Barclay’s Equity Research Competition. The winners were asked to give feedback on why they wanted to participate in this competition, how they prepared, and what they learned. Here’s what they said:
Why did you decide to participate in the Barclay’s Equity Research competition?
“I decided to participate in the competition to learn more about fundamental equity analysis and to research an industry that I wasn't very familiar with. I think stock pitches are very educational because they require you to synthesize accounting information, valuation techniques, and industry research into six slides without boring the audience."
“The Barclay's Equity Research competition seemed to be a natural path for me to follow as I have been interested in equities and company valuation since my sophomore year of high school, when I began trading.”
How much time did you put into preparing for the competition?
“It is hard to quantify the number of hours we spent on the competition because we spent a countless amount of time developing and refining our investment thesis and many hours looking for the proper visuals to express said thesis.”
“I'd say that my team put in between 40 and 60 hours each into preparing our pitch between various meetings, work periods, and practice sessions.”
What did you learn from the experience?
“I learned that while the content of a stock pitch is important, presentation style and public speaking skills may be more important when trying to convince an audience that an investment thesis is correct.”
“I learned the most from working with my teammates. It's incredible how leveraging the minds of a team working together can yield fantastic results. Jack and Jay are both juniors with previous experience in equity trading (Jack) and private equity (Jay), so they both had huge knowledge bases from which to teach me as I navigated my first FEP competition.”