Ryan Jarrell

Background

About Ryan Jarrell

Like many veterans transitioning out of the military to the civilian world, I struggled for years to find my new passion in life after my military career. I found out what I was not passionate about through trial and error, i.e, rental car sales and hydraulic work-over operations. It wasn't until I took a capital markets class while getting my MBA that I felt like I found a place where I belonged again. As a hobby, while working offshore in Africa, I picked up stock trading. Some people like to go to Vegas to gamble; I preferred apps like Ally and Robinhood. I played around with trades and creating my portfolio and enjoyed some success. However, I now know that 95% of that success resulted from dumb luck and the general positive movements of the stock market. I had read Warren Buffet's letters to shareholders and had a superficial understanding of fundamental investing principles. Still, the thrill of quick capital gains overcame any disciplined approach to rational investing. After reading books like "A Random Walk Down Wallstreet,""The Little Book of Common Sense Investing,""The Most Important Thing," and "Thinking, Fast and Slow," I realized I wanted to transition from an amateur to a professional. In my mind, it was analogous to the difference between someone that enjoys playing paintball on the weekends with their buddies to an actual infantry officer in the Marine Corps. I am currently completing my final year as a full-time MBA candidate and am serving as the Corporate Secretary for the Cougar Investment Fund, a $12.5 million multi-cap equity portfolio that current UH graduate students manage. My current side project is teaching myself Python and Tableau to better present financial data. I will be graduating in May 2022 and am actively seeking internships and full-time positions in investment banking and portfolio management upon graduation.