New Poll: How many Interviews

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How many interviews do you have?

  • 0, I'm not applying this cycle

    Votes: 19 9.8%

  • 0, I'm still waiting for my first

    Votes: 33 17.0%

  • 1

    Votes: 23 11.9%

  • 2

    Votes: 14 7.2%

  • 3

    Votes: 21 10.8%

  • 4

    Votes: 9 4.6%

  • 5

    Votes: 14 7.2%

  • 6

    Votes: 11 5.7%

  • 7

    Votes: 7 3.6%

  • 8

    Votes: 7 3.6%

  • 9

    Votes: 7 3.6%

  • 10

    Votes: 7 3.6%

  • 11

    Votes: 3 1.5%

  • 12

    Votes: 5 2.6%

  • 13

    Votes: 1 0.5%

  • 14

    Votes: 2 1.0%

  • 15

    Votes: 1 0.5%

  • 16

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • 17

    Votes: 1 0.5%

  • 18

    Votes: 1 0.5%

  • 19

    Votes: 1 0.5%

  • 20

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • 21+

    Votes: 7 3.6%
  • Total voters
    194
  • Poll closed .
I approve of the improved version.

=)
 
definitely an improvement🙂
 
it would be funny if it was a normal distribution
 
zerial said:
it would be funny if it was a normal distribution
Click to expand...

I was thinking that when I made the poll, but even normal distributions tend to have "fat tails."

Also, this poll is completely unscientific, prone to selection bias, and does not take into account when people submitted their applications and how many schools they applied to. Lastly, there is the issue of truthfulness when self-reporting. Does anyone really have 21+? 🙂
 
Who the hell reported 21+? Methinks that's such a lie.
 
also... 12 and 15? Isn't that a bit ridiculous as well?
 
in the previous thread one person had like 14 or 15!
 
jla314 said:
in the previous thread one person had like 14 or 15!
Click to expand...

hehe, that was me. I got an invite while I was replying to someone.

I also commented on your MDApps profile. Are you a real person? 😛

Did you do IB at Merrill? What group? Happy you're not working at literally the Bank of America now? hehe
 
mechtel said:
hehe, that was me. I got an invite while I was replying to someone.

I also commented on your MDApps profile. Are you a real person? 😛

Did you do IB at Merrill? What group? Happy you're not working at literally the Bank of America now? hehe
Click to expand...

yeah, I'm curious what you guys did at Merrill.

And what's wrong with BofA? My favorite stock over the past few months--basically paid for half my college tuition.
 
Contrarian said:
yeah, I'm curious what you guys did at Merrill.

And what's wrong with BofA? My favorite stock over the past few months--basically paid for half my college tuition.
Click to expand...

I sold BAC at 8 at a loss. 🙁

Wow, betting your college fund on a bank in which common shareholders still risk being diluted to nothing due in part to warrants held by Treasury takes guts. Glad all us pre-meds aren't so risk-averse. 🙂
 
lol yes i am a real person. i appreciate what you said, it means a lot coming from a fellow applicant 🙂

my merrill internship wasnt in like an NYC office so it wasn't intense or stressful like what you guys are probably thinking...nothing bad to say about merrill or bank of america, but IB certainly wasn't the right fit and i think i am more happy i had the sense to get out of finance while i was a freshman 😎
 
mechtel said:
I sold BAC at 8 at a loss. 🙁

Wow, betting your college fund on a bank in which common shareholders still risk being diluted to nothing due in part to warrants held by Treasury takes guts. Glad all us pre-meds aren't so risk-averse. 🙂
Click to expand...

why would the warrants be executed? BAC raised all the capital required by the stress tests by the preferred to common exchange, asset sales, and other swaps--in fact I believe it was 4 or 5 billion in excess of the 34B the gov't asked for. Not only that, they did it in record speed, while other supposedly "stronger" banks like WFC were still twiddling their thumbs.

BAC is going to be an earnings powerhouse in a few years, particularly because the ML purchase will be looked back on as an excellent move. Yeah, they overpaid, but in healthier market conditions (which we are seeing), ML can earn 15B per year. I love how they are expanding their presence in emerging markets, particularly India and China. Normalized earnings for the retail banking/Countrywide is like 30B--so 45B, which I think is a conservative estimate for normalized income.

Now let's say they have to issue an additional 2B shares to pay back TARP and re-purchase warrants. They currently have 8B shares outstanding, so after all is said and done, let's say they have 10B outstanding. 45B/10B = 4.5 EPS x 10 PE (typical for banks) = $45.00

BAC is at least a double from here 2-3 years down the road. It holds 12% of all deposits in the U.S. The steep yield curve is free money for them.
 
Contrarian said:
why would the warrants be executed? BAC raised all the capital required by the stress tests by the preferred to common exchange, asset sales, and other swaps--in fact I believe it was 4 or 5 billion in excess of the 34B the gov't asked for. Not only that, they did it in record speed, while other supposedly "stronger" banks like WFC were still twiddling their thumbs.

BAC is going to be an earnings powerhouse in a few years, particularly because the ML purchase will be looked back on as an excellent move. Yeah, they overpaid, but in healthier market conditions (which we are seeing), ML can earn 15B per year. I love how they are expanding their presence in emerging markets, particularly India and China. Normalized earnings for the retail banking/Countrywide is like 30B--so 45B, which I think is a conservative estimate for normalized income.

Now let's say they have to issue an additional 2B shares to pay back TARP and re-purchase warrants. They currently have 8B shares outstanding, so after all is said and done, let's say they have 10B outstanding. 45B/10B = 4.5 EPS x 10 PE (typical for banks) = $45.00

BAC is at least a double from here 2-3 years down the road. It holds 12% of all deposits in the U.S. The steep yield curve is free money for them.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... Very interesting analysis. I haven't dug into any of the relevant regulatory filings so can't attest to or refute any of your specific points. Even if I did, a lot of things from the firesale acquisitions of countrywide and merrill are still missing from the books. How could BofA buy an entire investment bank over a weekend while doing proper due diligence? It takes me longer to decide whether to buy a pair of shoes.

My point isn't that one should or should not invest in BAC. My point is simply that it's a risky asset to hold and I commend your tolerance of risk. All equities are risky or else they shouldn't return more historically than treasuries. Actually, I'm a strong believer in the efficent markets hypothesis. The current stock price of $17 should be the best approximation of what it is really worth as there has certainly been too much volume in it for any price manipulation. $17 should reflect all publically available information and be a weighted average of all the people who believe it is worth $100 and all the people who believe it is worthless. Since there is obviously great upside potential (it is not unreasonable that the stock would trade at $45 in 2-3 years as you conclude), there must also be great downside potential or else it would simply be trading at a $45 adjusted for the futures markets are showing to be the risk-free rate in the next 2-3 years.
 
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brooklynblunder said:
so if i invest in BAC i'm gonna make bank?
Click to expand...

yes, you can bank on it 😉

but, seriously, it's my personal favorite. I'm overweight the entire financial sector though, and I tend to be a contrarian investor. I still think lots of fund managers are under-invested in financials because their earnings will not improve significantly until Q3 or Q4 2010. That said, you've got to go for what's not popular if you want to make real money.

The recession is almost certainly over, but the recovery will be slow, and unemployment will stay high for some time, which will keep a lid on housing prices and likely put pressure on credit card portfolios. But that's why these stocks are 50 and 60% off their highs. In other words, I think risk is fairly priced at these levels.

Do your own due diligence, as always.
 
Contrarian said:
yes, you can bank on it 😉

but, seriously, it's my personal favorite. I'm overweight the entire financial sector though, and I tend to be a contrarian investor. I still think lots of fund managers are under-invested in financials because their earnings will not improve significantly until Q3 or Q4 2010. That said, you've got to go for what's not popular if you want to make real money.

The recession is almost certainly over, but the recovery will be slow, and unemployment will stay high for some time, which will keep a lid on housing prices and likely put pressure on credit card portfolios. But that's why these stocks are 50 and 60% off their highs. In other words, I think risk is fairly priced at these levels.

Do your own due diligence, as always.
Click to expand...

I'm long GS and GE at the moment. Let's hope you are right!
 
Contrarian said:
yeah me too. I would like to explore MD/MBA as a potential option down the road, but that depends on a lot of things.



nice, they've both done very well recently. do you hedge with options at all?
Click to expand...

No, I've never seen the logic in a protected put unless some arbitrage were readily apparent, but arbitrage opportunities are rare and if they exist they would be arbed away quickly. Plus I've been a bit busy with secondaries and interviews these days so I'd imagine I wouldn't be the first to find one anyway. 🙂
 
how would a financially ignorant person go about learning about investing in the market?
 
mechtel said:
No, I've never seen the logic in a protected put unless some arbitrage were readily apparent, but arbitrage opportunities are rare and if they exist they would be arbed away quickly. Plus I've been a bit busy with secondaries and interviews these days so I'd imagine I wouldn't be the first to find one anyway. 🙂
Click to expand...

ah, yeah I don't think I've ever bought puts either (I'll sell them though). I'll sell calls against my long positions in some cases. But that was more of a summer thing, when I had more time to trade. School + secondaries changed my investing style more than a bit lol.
 
brooklynblunder said:
how would a financially ignorant person go about learning about investing in the market?
Click to expand...

You'll need a brokerage account...I use TD Ameritrade, and I have no complaints. Keep up with business news, look up things you don't understand. There's some good resources on the web to get you started. Start small, obviously.
 
brooklynblunder said:
how would a financially ignorant person go about learning about investing in the market?
Click to expand...

Well if you share my beliefs (obviously they are contradictory b/c I would just buy an S&P index fund if I thought no one could really beat the market and most of the leading academics in the field have managed hedge funds a la LTCM at one point), then an efficient market protects fools from themselves and it doesn't really matter what you buy.

If you are in the Contrarian camp, then you would buy a bunch of books or read random blogs like seeking alpha.

For most retail investors, I think just reading wsj.com and maybe the finance and business sections of economist.com and becoming versed with the markets is a logical approach.
 
Good look to everyone... For those with interviews, hope you rock 'em! For those who don't, hope you'll be receiving invites soon!
 
mechtel said:
Well if you share my beliefs (obviously they are contradictory b/c I would just buy an S&P index fund if I thought no one could really beat the market and most of the leading academics in the field have managed hedge funds a la LTCM at one point), then an efficient market protects fools from themselves and it doesn't really matter what you buy.

If you are in the Contrarian camp, then you would buy a bunch of books or read random blogs like seeking alpha.

For most retail investors, I think just reading wsj.com and maybe the finance and business sections of economist.com and becoming versed with the markets is a logical approach.
Click to expand...

Nice Long Term Capital Management reference lol. Are you both finance undergrad majors, as well? It's an interesting path to take into medicine. I've enjoyed it 🙂
 
Also, EMH, really? It doesn't really account for why asset bubbles occur... at all... I mean, how could you possibly believe in EMH having seen the ridiculous volatility and information asymmetry in the last year!
 
brooklynblunder said:
how would a financially ignorant person go about learning about investing in the market?
Click to expand...

Get your rich grand parents to buy you oil stock.

I guess when a stock gets too big, they split your stocks, so I started out with 50, and I've split enough times to now I have 400 stocks with this oil company and basically it's worth my med-school tuition.

Seriously though, investing with small amounts of money is not going to do anything for you. I approach the stock market as a high risk impatient investor. For instance, I bought 1,000 shares of the Sony stock while noticing they were on an upward trend, the next day they rose $2, and I sold and made $2k in one day. It's a risk, but they have charts and stuff that show when companies will rise and fall. My family's broker is a boss, he makes ridiculous ca$h.

The way I approach finances is very unusual though, plus I am in a very fortunate situation where I have money I can risk. The stock market isn't really a place for college students.
 
ApoK said:
Also, EMH, really? It doesn't really account for why asset bubbles occur... at all... I mean, how could you possibly believe in EMH having seen the ridiculous volatility and information asymmetry in the last year!
Click to expand...

http://emlab.berkeley.edu/pub/econ/ugrad/theses/iulia_stefan_thesis.pdf

I do of course believe that there are herding effects and markets tend to overshoot and undershoot. Behavioral economists study this. But just as people aren't completely rational and self-interested, basic economic concepts are refined rather than abandoned. The EMH and Random Walk Theory are probably as central a paradigm in asset pricing as evolution is in biology.

And, no, I wasn't a finance major.
 
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Here's a better question: Is the medical school application market (for both "producers" and "consumers" of medical education) efficient? If not, how do some applicants benefit from information asymmetries? What role do websites such as SDN play in the allocation of information?
 
0, but have 2 rejections (and 2 holds) so far. I'm not that discouraged, though, as many of these were reach/hopeful schools to begin with. The ones I'm more confident in and have stats more in line with I haven't heard anything from yet, though it appears that may change soon.
 
Hopefully it's a good week for us all! 🙂
 
yeah, let's see less of that 0 invites column.
 
Still waiting for my committee packet to be sent (supposedly being sent today or tomorrow)!!! Therefore, no interview invites yet....
 
mechtel said:
http://emlab.berkeley.edu/pub/econ/ugrad/theses/iulia_stefan_thesis.pdf

I do of course believe that there are herding effects and markets tend to overshoot and undershoot. Behavioral economists study this. But just as people aren't completely rational and self-interested, basic economic concepts are refined rather than abandoned. The EMH and Random Walk Theory are probably as central a paradigm in asset pricing as evolution is in biology.

And, no, I wasn't a finance major.
Click to expand...

Well, it's certainly an eminent model, as it's clearly the basis for a lot of subsequent economic work but to compare it to evolution in biology would be a bit of a stretch... evolution is the underlying principle for virtually all of biology... It is well supported with empirical data and there are no significant alternatives to challenge its validity (erm, shall I say no *rational* alternatives).

EMH is not nearly as central to the entire field of financial economics and there are several other potentially valid models refuting its claims (Fama himself later had his doubts). Behavioral finance may completely usurp EMH entirely if they can build empirical models to explain investor irrationality.
 
4 seems to be the median and has been for awhile (I have been checking) so I feel I am right on track 🙂
 
ApoK said:
Well, it's certainly an eminent model, as it's clearly the basis for a lot of subsequent economic work but to compare it to evolution in biology would be a bit of a stretch... evolution is the underlying principle for virtually all of biology... It is well supported with empirical data and there are no significant alternatives to challenge its validity (erm, shall I say no *rational* alternatives).

EMH is not nearly as central to the entire field of financial economics and there are several other potentially valid models refuting its claims (Fama himself later had his doubts). Behavioral finance may completely usurp EMH entirely if they can build empirical models to explain investor irrationality.
Click to expand...

hehe, how did we get from interview invites to the EMH? In the very unlikely case we get asked about the EMH during interviews at least we'll both have something to say, huh? :laugh:

any other premeds moonlighting as financial economists?
 
Wow, I just got #16. For all those others with more than a handful, how are you managing to be at so many places at one time? I had to push some back. Do you also have work, school, volunteering, etc.? Not to mention the expense.
 
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19 interviews but then again I applied to too many schools (also because I had FAP. I just saved a little bit of money to add more schools)
 
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