What did I do?
For my practicum project, I started an investment fund, Qobalt Capital, with my business partner Craig Bruder. We came up with this idea in Fall 2020 when we started to share trading ideas to each other. As we shared more and more info, both making ourselves a bit of money in the process and learning along the way, we both came up with the idea to start Qobalt Capital after both of our applications were rejected from UMD's own investment fund club, Smith Investment Club. We felt that we provided a unique perspective on financial markets and that we could simply do better. So we created a joint bank account and both funded it with a couple thousand dollars to get started. We came up with contractual documents to hold ourselves accountable and gave ourselves responsibilities and duties to manage the account. We created auto-updating spreadsheets that would track our progress and we were on our way.
Advice for future Media Scholars
I would say that starting this company of mine was inevitable for me. I've always gone through my life with the "urge to create". In my freshman year as a student at UMD, I saw this and finally decided to take action. You always hear people say "if you end up doing what you love for a living, then it doesn't feel like work" so I put it to practice. I've been trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies since 2017 and was very passionate about it, so why not share that passion? I started with creating my podcast, Better Than Bitcoin Podcast. I started sharing general news topics on cryptocurrency because I was afraid of publicly sharing my investment analyses in fear of showing how wrong I could be. I eventually got over that fear and switched entirely to demonstrating my trading process. As I traded more and more, I learned how to better manage my risk and how to identify potential trades to take. The key thing I learned was also how to manage my emotions. Trading is a very emotional process with traders fighting the fear of missing out (FOMO) on investment opportunities. This irrational decisions can cloud your trading and risk management system and guarantees that you will lose money in the long run.
I improved these skills over the summer and really dove deep into trading. Over the 6 months is when I really started to get attention in the professional world. It became easier and easier to understand and communicate with business professionals and friends of my dad's and I got the idea of starting my own investment fund as I watched my dad separate his business from Raymond James and go on his own. Since I already loved trading and learned a lot along the way, it just made sense to start going in this direction.
I improved these skills over the summer and really dove deep into trading. Over the 6 months is when I really started to get attention in the professional world. It became easier and easier to understand and communicate with business professionals and friends of my dad's and I got the idea of starting my own investment fund as I watched my dad separate his business from Raymond James and go on his own. Since I already loved trading and learned a lot along the way, it just made sense to start going in this direction.
What did I learn?
From creating Qobalt Capital with Craig, I learned that in the case of starting businesses, you learn everything on your own. School will not teach you the intricacies of starting a business from who to hire, when to trust your gut, when outsourcing work is necessary, etc. If you learn everything on the job when you graduate, why wait until you graduate to learn those skills?
How have I grown?
Since staring my practicum, I have grown as a professional by learning more about what I want to do for a career. I realize that I don't know where Qobalt Capital will take me professionally. But I feel it is a step in the right direction. I don't know if I want to work for any large firms because I will feel as if my work is meaningless and that I am just another cog in a machine. If Qobalt Capital can grow and become something I can jump into full time after I graduate, I would be happy; but I also know that if it doesn't happen, I can still utilize Qobalt Capital and all other forms of media I have "put out there" to help me acquire a job that I want. That's why I made Qobalt's website, qobaltcapital.com. I made this website as a professional way to showcase my trading performance. It is a whole lot easier to tell someone to look up the website than it is to read out your entire resume or just say what you have done. Most people cannot grasp actions if you describe it to them, but fully understand if you show them.
Applying practicum experience moving forward
I can apply my practicum experience to my life and career moving forward by continuing this pursuit. If I can use my experience at Qobalt Capital as leverage to get an amazing job in the financial services industry, that will be great! If I can continue and build Qobalt Capital to be a legitimate career, that would be great too! But no matter what happens after, I will be happy that I pursued this because it looks amazing on a resume!
Future Plans
My future plans for the rest of my time at UMD will be to continue my education as a Finance and Economics double major as well as hanging out with my friends and continuing to build Qobalt Capital. As for my future career, I don't have any plans since I don't know what I want to do. I don't know where this will take me but I feel like I'm going in the right direction.