Finding Out What Really Interests Me
By: Abhishek Bhagat (W ’28)
GRIP: Eurolife FHH in Athens, Greece
A key skill that I developed was the process of making a decision on an investment opportunity. Coming in, I thought it was mainly about the technical aspect and numbers that drive a decision to invest in a company, bond, or option, but that there is so much more that goes into it. The biggest project I worked on was evaluating a Greek metals company. While I did work on the technical aspect of building a full financial model and coming up with an implied share price, there was a lot of other work around it that also was important for me to understand.
For instance, I was given presentations and reports from the company’s executive board to understand what their future vision for the company is, how they will spend their capital in the future, and what might be some headwinds they may face. This was important to consider in my evaluation, both technically and as a macroeconomic indicator. I used this subjective information that may not have had a number attached to it to both understand the impact it may have on the company managerially, but also include those perspectives within the financial model by adjusting some drivers that calculate the implied share price. This allowed me to find a wide range of valuations under a variety of scenarios.
Overall, this experience allowed me to really understand what parts of finance I found interesting. As I entered the internship, I knew that I was interested in finance but was not completely sold on doing it, but since I got exposure to so many different areas I was able to figure out that I was more interested in the managerial side of how a company operates or within monetary policy in government and how that may shape a company.
This is largely because I would always start off my work day by reading the news and understanding where we are economically and financially, and seeing if there is any news that may be relevant. This was definitely the most interesting part for me and trying to figure out how the daily news and policies implemented may affect certain companies.
Throughout the internship, I have developed skills such as macroeconomic analysis, policy analysis, financial modeling, excel, DCF analysis, and also soft skills like how to interact in a team setting.
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