JPMC Quant Internship Experience | Shirin Jain
In Phil Dunphy’s wise words which I quote “The only constant is change”. In the chaos of the immensity of this common universe, there are countless possibilities, challenges, surprises, and experiences waiting for you to seize. Out of all the undergraduate experiences I had, my summer internship at JP Morgan Chase stands out as one of the most memorable.
It was the beginning of my second year when a lot of opportunities arrived for sophomores for third year internships. I was practicing DSA and competitive programming from Leetcode, Interviewbit and CSES. I applied for the J.P. Morgan Chase Quantitative Research Mentorship Program even though I had no prior knowledge of quantitative finance. I knew nothing about the entire field of quantitative research. After taking an aptitude and coding test and completing a one-week case study in programming, I was given the chance to be a mentee with the company.
The programme, which lasted over a year, was made up of numerous training sessions designed to educate students to various different facets and areas of quantitative finance as well as the company’s efforts in this area. The sessions sparked my interest in exploring and working in quantitative research. After a series of interviews, I obtained a pre-internship offer for my third year summer internship with the firm through this programme.
The company’s eight-week internship programme was conducted offline in Mumbai. I recall spending the first week of my internship getting acquainted with the team and the system and, of course, taking a trip to the stunning Marine Drive. Each intern collaborates with a team on a particular project. I was the only intern in my team, Agency Lending which comes under Security Services.
My manager and I met every day to discuss my project. During these sessions, she took updates on my project and we talked about how to implement things more efficiently. I had weekly virtual meetings with the Agency Lending team in New York and London, where I learned about the weekly updates on all the active projects of my team.
My team, Securities Services provides custody, accounting, administration, liquidity management, securities lending, collateral management, performance management and data solutions to help institutional investors grow and succeed both now, and in the future.
My project was essentially building a back-testing framework for the voila application of AL Bid Model. It also involved comparing the voila application results with the original portfolio and identifying the shortfalls. I also performed the incremental analysis for the revenues. Most of the tasks involved using Python. The project involved a complete software development cycle of coding, unit testing, code review and deployment.
Although the internship was challenging, it went smoothly because everyone on the team was encouraging and supportive. After a long tiring week, we usually ended Fridays discussing plans for the weekends. That was the time when we bonded with the team and other interns. My internship’s final week was spent finishing our projects and presenting them to the entire QR India team. I gave two presentations, to the Global Securities Services team and the QR India team where I explained how my effort has helped the firm’s Agency Lending business. And thus, my unforgettable internship came to an end at that point.
These 8 weeks passed on quicker than I realized. They were filled with pressure and emotional breakdowns, facing failures and enjoying sweet victories, keeping yourself calm and continuing to learn from your mistakes. But that is not all. These 8 weeks were also about experiencing Mumbai’s rain and eating vada pav at a local street shop, standing in an overcrowded local train and going to marine drive at midnight to hear the sound of the waves to calm yourself. They were about drinking mango martinis at the manager’s home and playing with her 2 little cats. They were about making new friends, living by yourself and being home sick and trying to cope with it. They were about being fragile and taking pauses whenever you feel it’s too much and enjoying sweet nothings.
