The Minutemen Alternative Investment Fund (MAIF) is the only selective student-run hedge fund comprised of undergraduate students at the Isenberg School of Management. MAIF explores a variety of alternative strategies to broaden our investment exposure through hands on, real-time investing. Both our Long/Short and Derivative groups have 30+ members who conduct equity research, perform continuing coverage, and execute trades to incessantly chase alpha on a daily basis. Acting as the only fund on campus to jointly work with other organizations on campus to increase the pipeline of students placing into careers on Wall Street, MAIF gives students the opportunity to interview into the fund as a means of focusing on its portfolio, which is constructed through two primary avenues.
The fund’s long/short unit strives to attain absolute returns irrespective of any market benchmark by taking active long and short positions in equity securities. The fund prefers to invest in, and has most of its portfolio allocated to, United States domiciled companies. The fund seeks to achieve this absolute return by remaining long high-quality companies with long-term sustainable growth and/or companies with unrecognized value with obvious repricing events in the short-medium term (2 quarters – 2.5 years). At the same time, the fund seeks to both profit and neutralize market correlation and risk by putting on short positions in instances of companies whose moats, business strategies, and/or valuation we view as manifestly untethered from what is implied by the current price, along the same timeline for price realization as the long positions.
The fund’s derivatives unit seeks to generate uncorrelated excess return by actively trading volatility on both indices and single names. The fund seeks to actively manage Greek exposure, and typically does not retain price-sensitivity to the underlying. The derivatives unit seeks to exploit structural mispricings in derivatives markets (e.g., the consistently negative volatility risk premium) which remaining insulated from tail risks.
The fund as a whole is led by our President, Alec Rovitz, who joined MAIF as a long/short analyst and spent time covering TMT, Consumer Discretionary, and Industrial sectors before taking on his current position. The long/short portfolio is run by Portfolio Manager Matt Szafran, who joined the fund as a derivatives analyst and spent time covering Industrials and Financial sectors. In addition, the derivatives portfolio is currently run by Portfolio Manager Jean Saint-Felix, who joined the fund as a derivatives analyst. Past alumni have placed into firms at the likes of Goldman Sachs, Citi Bank, Guggenheim, Cantor Fitzgerald, Stephens, J.P. Morgan, BNY Mellon, Alvarez & Marsal, Credit Suisse, UBS, and dozens of other distinguished shops on the street. To learn more please contact maif.umass@gmail.com
Placement
