"The Pulse" -- #120 / Losing Your Retirement in 15 Minutes

Recruiting Timeline:

Banking:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2027: Counting down the days until RBC opens the SA 2027 app, this usually signifies the start of the SA 2027 recruiting season. Firms are actively conducting coffee chats, check your school’s Handshake to find coffee chats for Goldman, Houlihan Lokey, and Guggenheim

• SA 2026: ING and D.A. Davidson opened apps this week. 127 firms are recruiting for SA 2026

• FT 2026: TAP Advisors, Berkshire Global Advisors, District Capital Advisors, and more opened their apps. 57 firms are actively recruiting for FT 2026. Internships ended, return offers were distributed, and the floodgates for FT apps opened  

• If you need some interview support or just need a place to vent, check out our Coaching Program: Coaching for banking, consulting, and buyside recruiting | The Pulse. 95%+ of those coached for the summer 2026 recruiting season received offers!

New SA 2026 Applications:

• ING: Large Netherlands Bank (SA 2026)

• D.A. Davidson: Boutique M&A (SA 2026)

New FT 2026 Applications:

• TAP Advisors: Boutique M&A (FT 2026)

• Berkshire Global Advisors: Boutique M&A (FT 2026)

• District Capital Advisors: Boutique M&A (FT 2026)

• M2O: Private fund placements (FT 2026)

• Eastdil Secured: RE IB (FT 2026)

See below to gain access to our premium database, updated weekly, which houses the application processes for over 300+ banks/consulting/buyside firms! Gain an edge over everyone else by not having to spend countless hours tracking applications and deadlines.

Consulting:

Where We’re At:

• We are about midway through this process. Smaller, boutique firms will continue to release applications into the winter.

SA 2026 released apps:

• Accenture - Consulting Summer Analyst (SA 2026)

SA 2027 released apps:

• KPMG - Audit/Deals Advisory (SA 2027)

• Alvarez & Marsal - Transaction Advisory Intern (SA 2027)

FT 2026 released apps:

• Strategy& - Associate (FT 2026)

• Graph Strategy - Associate (FT 2026)

• Farient Advisors - Consulting Business Analyst

• Harbor - Associate Consultant

• Hayden - Associate Consulting (FT 2026)

Buyside:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2026: M31, JMI Equity, Related Companies, and more opened their apps this week. Currently, 143 buyside firms are recruiting for SA 2026 seats 

New SA 2026 released apps:

• M31: VC (SA 2026)

• JMI Equity: Growth Equity (SA 2026)

• Related Companies: RE Acquisitions (SA 2026)

• Yellow Wood: MM PE (SA 2026)

• Sagehall: REPE (SA 2026)

The database is updated weekly and contains 300+ Investment Banking and Consulting internships/full-time positions along with:

• Interview tips for specific companies

• Interview prep material

• Applications and deadlines linked so that you can apply with one click

• Insider information about the application process

• Professionals to network with

• Buyside deadlines, interview prep, and people to network with for the sweatiest of students

We send the updated dataset every week with the latest banking and consulting job postings. We released our 120th update today.

Students we have been helping have already landed roles at Blackstone, Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Jefferies, Citi, and Solomon.

To get access to the database and the weekly updates, you make a one-time investment of $50 Credit Card / Debit Card: (ThePulsePrep 25% SALE—Stripe.com) that grants you annual access to the updated database (please reach out for additional payment options). If you don’t find our services helpful, we simply ask for feedback on an area we can improve upon and will refund your $50.

This is a small investment for a huge payout when you secure your dream offer!

Premium Database——>Database for banking, consulting and buyside roles | The Pulse 

Market Update: 

Losing Your Retirement in 15 Minutes

Before diving in, I need to reiterate: this is not financial advice, nor intended to be used to make investment decisions. This is purely a discussion and review. All investments should be made purely based on your own judgment, risk tolerance, and research.

Now that we got that out of the way, this week I’m going to review a recent personal trade that I made where I nearly blew my entire retirement on a 15-minute decision. The ‘QMMM’ trade.

Investing in single names is an incredibly dangerous game because you’re fighting against unsystematic risk. Fraud, bad capital structures, terrible growth plans, undiversified bank accounts, etc—these are all company-specific risks that can be diversified away when investing in an index or a fund. When you invest in single-names, you directly bear these risks.

For last ~20 years, investors have been electing for passive management strategies where they can invest in a low-cost, broad-based ETF or mutual fund which holds a basket of stocks to mitigate any unsystematic risk. We wrote about this extensively in prior weekly releases. This has become so popular that there are now more ETFs than individual listed companies on the NYSE. Wild.

Anyways, just like anyone else who likes to follow markets / gamble a bit, I will still invest in single-names from time to time. Sometimes, I’ll just be an outright degenerate and make short-term risky trades bets.  

A week or two ago, I shorted a shitco listed as ‘QMMM.’ This is a digital media company based out of Hong Kong. What does digital media entail? I’m not too sure tbh and no one else really knows either—especially in the context of QMMM’s production.

I shorted these guys with $1,000 at $4.75 / share largely based on a report published by the legendary Edwin Dorsey: The Bear Cave. It didn’t go so well…

Now, I by no means want to throw Edwin under the bus. He publishes a great newsletter and highlights all of the associated risks of investing on the basis of anything he’s written. I fully knew I was taking a gamble and invested because I wanted to. Edwin’s claims against this Company may still pan out, but the market can remain irrational longer than anyone can stay solvent.

What happened here is that I got slapped in the face by a wave of unsystematic risk. QMMM has fraud written all over it and doesn’t even have strong financials to support any LONG. The stock price of QMMM moved purely due to a pump and dump scheme believed to be organized by a group of fraudsters out in China.

I nearly lost $100K on a 15-min, $1,000 trade.

When you short something, your losses are technically uncapped.

However, I’m no rookie. I placed a limit order at $6 / share to fully cover my short in the event that the stock moved against me. Thankfully this was executed, so I only lost ~$200—-for a second, I nearly had a code brown.

^I figured that there was a world where this group of fraudsters plowed even more money into the stock to make it work against any short seller entering a trade after the release of Edwin’s publication (highly regarded amongst distressed investors).

15 minutes of diligence. Single-name. Short. I’ve been smarter, I’ve been luckier, but this was a fun one.

Disclosure: Nothing written here is financial advice or should be used for investment decisions.

Tell Me About Yourself

Without fail, in every job interview, you will get a question along the lines of “Tell me about yourself?” or “Walk me through your resume”. These questions are extremely important.

They offer the interviewer a chance to look at your resume and also for you to tell your story.

Your answer should ideally contain the following:

1. Where you’re from

2. School, major, perhaps how you ended up at each

3. What sparked your interest in the field you are interviewing in

4. Extracurriculars/interests and how the experiences contributed to your next steps

5. Prior internship experience

That is a lot to cover in 90 seconds, so be concise and choose what you discuss wisely. The worst thing you can do is take 5 minutes to answer this question and fail to sell yourself to the interviewer.

Make sure the interests/internships you discuss are relevant and recent. Discussing how you were a busboy in 10th grade does not provide much relevant information when you are interviewing for a consulting role as a Sophomore in college.

Try to humanize yourself as much as possible. These interviewers speak with dozens of candidates, so make yourself memorable by being likeable and interesting. At the end of the day, everyone wants to work with people they like. Do not be afraid to discuss your personal interests even if they’re totally unrelated to work.

Practicing answers to these questions is really important, but don’t sound like a robot. There’s no reason you should need to memorize information about yourself. It should flow pretty naturally.

Going Forward:

We Want to Meet Your Club

We want to partner with your club / organization to prepare your members for summer 2027 investment banking and consulting recruiting. In the past, we have partnered with clubs across UPenn, UMich, UVA, UCLA, and more.

Please shoot an email to [email protected] to set up a time to meet!

Please reach out to us with any questions about recruiting or if you’re interested in meeting the team! ([email protected])

We are happy to chat, review resumes, or help set up a coaching session.

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“The Pulse” #120