Josh Brechtel
Current job title, company: Associate, Mercer
Location: Chicago
Interests/Hobbies: I enjoy travelling, cooking, going to the gym, skiing, and going to the beach.
What do you enjoy most about your current role? Can you share a few of your main responsibilities?
I enjoy my team the most. I obviously enjoy my work a great deal, and firmly believe I am in the correct career. However, the social aspect of a job can be hit or miss, and I am lucky to say my team and I get along well having a good mixture of banter and professionalism. My responsibilities include helping our portfolio management team look at our fund of funds/ HF portfolios to make sure the portfolio is balanced, well-diversified, and meets the client’s objectives surrounding return, liquidity, etc. I also help our manager research team with finding the best managers in the hedge fund industry, investment due diligence, operational due diligence, and writing research reports. In terms of my day to day, I work a lot in Excel/ PowerPoint and Python.
What advice would you give to a student who is trying to break into your industry?
To help get into the more finance side of the industry, it helps to show interest in the industry. I have always followed the stock market and politics closely, and it has been helpful in holding a conversation. This can also help in interviews if you can be passionate and have more of a conversation rather than just a Q&A. I would also say taking the CFA exams helped me differentiate and show employers my dedication. I think now employers know that I will be doing this as a career for my whole life and not viewing my job as a 9-5 clock in, clock out job.
Do you have any ‘go to’ websites, newsletters, or apps for your industry or resources you check regularly?
Reading and staying up to date is a large part of what I do, however, the material covers a wide breadth such as investments, politics, laws, specific hedge fund managers, geopolitical tensions, etc. I have used “Exec Sum” by Litquidity which is a finance meme page on Instagram- it sounds a tad unprofessional, but I think it draws attention to important industry topics in a fun way. I read a couple of FT articles a day, Reuters, Yahoo Finance, and FundFire. Then, I also read a lot of articles that aren’t exactly available to the average student/ retail investor which includes the major banks, occasional white papers from large asset managers, and I read a lot of HF specific materials we receive from managers. I occasionally watch MSNBC, CNBC, or Bloomberg especially on dates when the Fed has a meeting or something along those lines. I have several apps with notifications turned on which include Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, WSJ, and NYT. I have found when you get 5+ notifications on the same thing, it helps you remember it and view it as important (even if you personally don’t exactly care that CPI data surprised expectations by .1% MoM).
What is the main piece of advice you’d like to share with current econ majors?
The main piece of advice I would give to undergraduate students is to prioritize their grades as GPA will matter a great deal for your first job. I would say specifically try to get your major related grades up and try to learn some hard skills like Excel or coding before graduating as those qualifications are appreciated by many firms.