Van Leeuwen & Company Equity Analyst
During the summer of 2018, I had an internship as an analyst for Van Leeuwen & Company located in Princeton, NJ. My overall role at this internship was to conduct equity research and then give my opinion on whether to buy different companies. In a normal week, I was assigned a company that I had to research and then report back to my supervisor. This research included looking through financial statements, manipulating data in excel to try and find any trends that the company was doing good, searching google for any news about the company, looking at the company website, etc. At the beginning of each week, I had to present to my boss the research I have done the previous week. This normally took place in the meetings that were held every Monday morning. I was also given the opportunity to visit several companies throughout the internship including JP Morgan and Chase.
Some of the companies that I worked on included Abbott Laboratories, Activision Blizzard, Mastercard, Spotify, SS&C Technologies, Qualcomm, Emerson Electrical Company, etc. Van Leeuwen & Company ended up investing in SS&C Technologies and Abbott Laboratories based off of my recommendations. Although I was normally given the different stocks to research, I was required to come up with one idea of my own. The idea that I came up with was Activision Blizzard and I had to present all my research to my boss during my last week there.
During this internship, I learned how to use excel to manipulate data, how to analyze financial statements, and how to properly evaluate a company to see if it is a good investment. I was also able to sharpen my public speaking and writing skills during my time there. Since I learned how to better manipulate data, this internship can relate to MIS 2502, Data Analytics. For instance, I would use excel to calculate revenue growth year over year. I also calculated correlations in the excel. For example, I calculated a correlation to see if the fluctuation in gas prices was correlated to the stock price of Fleetcor. This internship helped me sharpen numerous skills that will serve me well in the major and my professional life going forward.