SUMA Venture Capitalist Roundtable

I am on the board of the Sloan Undergradute Management Association (SUMA) at MIT. I am organizing an event, the SUMA Venture Capitalist Roundtable, taking place on April 27th, at 7:00PM in Room 3-442 @ MIT. The goal of the event is to invite five venture capitalists from diverse industries and backgrounds to educate MIT students on the inner-workings of VC firms. Namely, this will involve educating MIT students on how a VC firm works, what are the different roles played by individuals in a VC firm, how firms value start-up opportunities, etc... The Roundtable discussion will also be followed by a brief networking session. For the entrepreneurs in the crowd, this is a great opportunity to network and ask for advice on taking your idea to the next level! The industries being represented at the Roundtable include IT, Energy, Cleantech, and Biotechnology. For the finance gurus, this is a fantastic opportunity to explore what it is like to work for a VC firm and potentially secure a job for the summer!

I would like to thank the following individuals for volunteering their time to come to MIT and educate MIT students about venture capitalism:

- Frank Andrasco, Partner, Egan Capital
- Graham Brooks, Senior Associate, 406 Ventures
- Gautam Gupta, Associate, General Catalyst
- Jhanavi Pathak, Business Associate, Romulus Capital
- Praveen Sahay, Managing Director, WAVE Equity Partners

I am eagerly looking forward to this event and encourage other students in the Cambridge area to come join us in room 3-442 @ MIT on April 27th, 7:00PM!

Swing trading on biotech

A friend of mine introduced me to something called momentum trading (also called swing trading) today and it is a pretty interesting concept. So for a quick background, there are two types of trading: swing and trend. Trend is when you are hoping that a stock would go in one direction, either up or down, over a period of time. Swing is when you are hoping the stock will just oscillate in both directions and not really go anywhere. Hence, in bear and bull market extremes, it is wiser to use a trend strategy since the stocks will tend to follow a directional trend. The key challenge with swing trading is to accurately define the market when it is going “nowhere.” This is tough.

However, an industry that came to my mind immediately after hearing this was biotechnology. I have noticed that several biotech company stocks either oscillate continuously or stay near the baseline, going “nowhere.” The reason being that many biotech companies are in the clinical trials and research phase for 5-10 years before releasing their drug. That being said, I wonder if the swing trading approach would work more often than not for the biotech industry…