2027 Investment Associate Intern

Bridgewater Associates•New York, NY

About The Position

For 50 years, Bridgewater has pursued one idea: the world can be understood. Markets and economies follow cause-and-effect relationships—and by understanding them, we think we can beat the markets and generate true uncorrelated returns ("alpha") at significant scale. Our clients include some of the world’s most sophisticated institutional investors who turn to us to use our unique insights to solve their biggest problems. Generating alpha at scale is an exceptionally difficult task. It requires predicting the future and doing so better than the millions of other extremely smart, highly motivated people who are trying to do the same. Our investment strategies seek to understand and navigate macroeconomic shifts that drive the world’s most liquid markets (bonds, currencies, equities, commodities, credit). These shifts have a very limited sample size (some of them haven’t yet happened in our lifetimes). Our approach is to start by digging deep to develop a fundamental cause-effect understanding of the economic and financial relationships that drive markets. We represent this understanding in a model of the world that we call our System—code and algorithms that generate views automatically, by ingesting vast amounts of significantly cleaned data and reflecting the relationships we’ve learned over decades of intense study and experience. Being systematic allows us to stress-test the quality of our ideas through time, and also helps ensure that at any given point, our positions reflect everything we’ve ever learned, so that our people can spend all of their time focused on compounding on our understanding at a faster rate than markets are learning. This approach requires us to be at the forefront of human-machine collaboration. Since 2012, Bridgewater has aggressively pursued the vision of the artificial investor that can do everything a human can, with computers not just representing the insights but also generating the insights themselves. In 2023, we introduced AIA (Artificial Investment Associate), our fully machine-powered investing strategy. Our learnings in building AIA are now transforming even our human investors’ jobs, allowing us to rapidly discover and systemize new insights, and accelerating our transformation toward a fully integrated system that combines the best of human and machine intelligence. Every day we obsessively interrogate our systems against our independent investor insights, and work to evolve our systems to reflect how the world is changing. Beating the markets with this approach requires intense collaboration between brilliant people who constantly push themselves and each other to improve every week, to arrive at the best ideas without ego or politics. We rapidly elevate the best thinkers to greater responsibility. We are looking to hire great talent for our Investment Associate roles. Does this sound like you? Our investment associates are the core team responsible for generating our macro and market insights, building our investment systems, and overseeing our portfolios. They are: Relentlessly, obsessively—curious. To beat markets, you must have unique insight—but markets are always learning. We need individuals fiercely driven to understand how the world works, uncovering new logical relationships, testing and exploring new data sources, and consistently trying to expand their understanding and constantly improve. Deeply independent—bordering on iconoclastic—thinkers. For decades, Bridgewater has been studying markets and economies and reflecting our best understanding in our investment systems. We need independent-minded individuals who will come in and tell us why what we’re doing and thinking is wrong—and be right about it. Conceptual and analytical. We need people who are excited by both the challenge of understanding abstract concepts and the challenge of translating insights into quantifiable measures in a systematic investment process. We are looking for exceptionally bright, “high horsepower” thinkers. Able to draw insights from a wide variety of backgrounds. Our investment approach draws from multiple disciplines—most obviously economics and finance—but also computer science, mathematics, statistics, political science, history, natural science, and more. To that end, our Investment Associates also come from a wide variety of backgrounds and are also unusually flexible thinkers. People who love collaborating, have a ton of grit, and are determined to grow rapidly. How we interact with each other is crucial to our success. The problems we must solve are so hard and multifaceted that they require continuous, intense collaboration and exploration of ideas. Grit is also essential—many of the problems we try to solve don’t have immediate or clear answers and wrestling through to the truth alongside others takes enormous perseverance. We need people who strive to constantly push themselves and each other to be their best and improve every week, to arrive at truth without ego or politics. If you prefer to work as an individual, this is not for you. If the pain of being pushed to evolve each day doesn’t excite you, this is not for you.

Requirements

Relentlessly, obsessively—curious.
Deeply independent—bordering on iconoclastic—thinkers.
Conceptual and analytical.
Able to draw insights from a wide variety of backgrounds.
People who love collaborating, have a ton of grit, and are determined to grow rapidly.

Responsibilities

Research the drivers of economies and markets.
Develop systematic indicators for trading markets.
Oversee our portfolios and live and breathe the markets.
Drive the future of human and machine investor collaboration.
Partnering with the world’s most sophisticated institutional investors.

Benefits

Total compensation for this position is $51,000 for the 8-week internship (less applicable deductions and withholdings), including a sign on bonus.
Our compensation package includes housing.

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