"The Pulse" --#78 / Regulation & Investing

Recruiting Timeline:

Banking:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2026: Houlihan Lokey and Clearsight Advisors opened their summer 2026 apps. 8 firms are actively recruiting for summer 2026 positions with many January deadlines. The Pulse has exclusive information on a few BIG NAMES with January 1st releases, so stay tuned

• To get everyone prepped before Winter Break, we want to meet with your undergraduate business/finance organization! Free of charge. Our coaches (including Pete the intern) will walk through insider insights on what YOU NEED to do before the end of winter break to crush interviews. Hit Pete’s line: [email protected] to set something up

• FT 2025: Nautical Advisory Services opened its application. There are currently 62 firms actively recruiting for FT 2025. However, this pipeline is mostly dead

New SA 2026 Applications:

• Houlihan Lokey: Boutique bank with a strong Rx presence (SA 2026)

• Clearsight Advisors: Virginia-based boutique (SA 2026)

New FT 2025 Applications:

• Nautical Advisory Services: Boutique advisory on maritime, founder-owned business (FT 2025)

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:

• 52 SA 2025 applications have been released along with 56 FT 2025 apps. This process is nearing the end so lock up those offers! 2 SA 2026 apps have been released (this is unusually early)!

SA 2025 released apps:

• Booz Allen Hamilton - Management Consultant Intern (SA 2025)

FT 2025 released apps:

• Reefpoint Group - Analyst (FT 2025)

SA 2026 released apps:

• Protiviti - Business Improvement Intern (SA 2026)

Apply ASAP if you’re interested!

Buyside:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2026: Apollo announced its application. Currently 8 buyside firms recruiting for SA 2026 seats.

New SA 2026 released apps:

• Apollo: $770bn AUM Mega-Fund, hiring for RE Debt intern (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 78th 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 pay a one-time fee of $50 (Venmo: ThePulsePrep / Credit Card: (ThePulsePrep—Stripe.com) that grants you annual access to the updated database (You can enable purchase protection if concerned). 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!

Video of Premium Database——>The Pulse Database Video

Market Update:

Regulation = Competition

Regulation might sound boring, but it’s a critical component to understand the competitive landscape of nearly every industry.

Also, there are always a few regulation-related interview questions such as: ‘What’s the Dodd-Frank Act?’ ‘What’s the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?’ and more recently ‘What’s Basel III?’

For an interview, it’s just memorization so don’t sweat it too hard. Today, I will discuss how investors size up regulation to be a competitive threat. 

Flashback to the year….ok imma stop there.

Use AI to summarize the history of regulation. That’s not my job.

Regulation at its core is a set of guidelines of which, a group of entities need to abide by. If they don’t, they get fined or are forced to shut down operations. Regulation is a means of protecting something: people, environment, affordability, anti-fraud, etc.

For investors, what they really care about is how much regulation influences a). pricing and b). market share. Let’s look into credit card networks as an industry where regulation can widely swing an investment thesis.

There are thousands of credit card issuers, but really only 4 key credit card networks. Every issuer relies on a credit card network to facilitate the transactional pipework of moving funds from consumer → merchant → merchant’s bank → issuing bank.

As an investor, the credit card network operates like an oligopoly. There are 4 main players: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. Visa is the largest by transaction volume controlling ~64%. So, Visa is semi-monopolistic within an oligopoly.

In investing terms, that’s a mote…and it’s wide. But how deep is it?

One could argue that regulatory bodies such as the FRB have credit card networks held by the balls when it comes to pricing. Every year, the FRB examines the fairness of interchange fees charged by credit card networks to merchants.

Ever notice, an additional 1.5-4% charge on your bill as a ‘credit card fee?’ That’s simply the merchant passing down interchange fees to consumers.

However, the FRB could wake up one day and determine that a 1.5 - 4% interchange fee is far too high. Any readjustment could be a significant impact to Visa’s margins—roughly 70-90% of their revenue comes from interchange fees.

That’s a substantial pricing risk that can’t really be mitigated because it’s wholly controlled by an independent governmental agency.

There are so many similar situations of un-mitigable pricing risk within the financial services industry so Visa isn’t alone by any means. If I was to make a competitive landscape of the credit card network, I’d toss in the FRB as a shadow threat given its power to swing performance virtually at the snap of its fingers.

They also wield a heavy hand in deciding whether or not Visa can be classified as a monopoly…and therefore broken up.

Hopefully these considerations make regulation a little less boring!

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

The Beauty of a Mock Interview

Outside of networking, mock interviews are the most useful tool you can use while recruiting.

Think about it, a company only has maybe 3 total hours of conversations with you before handing you an offer letter. That means you only have 3 hours to impress them with your polished interviewing. You also have a limited buffer to be weird and fuck up the entire interview.

3 reasons why mock interviewing will make your life 10x easier:

1. There is nothing like being in front of another person. The more someone is a stranger, the harder it is to be calm, cool, and collected…especially when you’re unfamiliar with the topics you’re speaking about. The good thing? Lot’s of practice in front of others can suppress some of those nerves!

2. Feedback on your body language. Another person can let you know if there is something off about your body language in an interview setting. Looking around the room, having a shaky voice, or moving your hands too much or little, are all BAD body language. You’ll never know unless someone else tells you

3. Curveball questions. You can only prepare so much. Some answers will have to be unscripted as there are hundreds of thousands of potential questions that can be asked. The more questions you’re given, the better prepared you’ll be

In the past, I made things really difficult for myself by not asking others for help. Mock interviews are the best way of prepping for an actual interview. You’d be surprised at how you sound when speaking in front of another person!

Don’t make your life hard, dial up a friend or shoot us an email @[email protected] if you’re looking to set up a mock interview.  

Going Forward:

If you run a club, we want to connect with you to partner. Please shoot us an email @[email protected], would love to make your club the most prepared on campus.

Coaching Details:

• Pay for 3, get one FREE = $150. (Venmo @ThePulsePrep or Credit Card: (Coaching Bundle $150 for 4 Sessions)

• 1 hour session = $50. (Venmo @ThePulsePrep or Credit Card: ThePulsePrep—Stripe.com

• 30-minute session = $30. Venmo @ThePulsePrep or Credit Card: ThePulsePrep—Stripe.com

• Email us with your availability and we will be happy to schedule a session @[email protected] 

Students we coached for SA 2025 have received offers at Goldman, JP Morgan, Evercore, and many other firms. Roughly 95% of those coached received offers last year!

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

Check us out on LinkedIn (The Pulse) and Instagram (ThePulse) too!

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The Pulse

“The Pulse” #78

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