Disciplined. Fundamental. The Alpha of Ross.
New Wave Capital is an undergraduate fund at the University of Michigan specializing in rigorous equity research, fundamental analysis, and cross-asset strategy, run entirely by students, on live capital, under a written constitution.
“We believe that when stakes are high, people perform and learn better.”
Sequoia. a16z. Millennium. Bain.
Private fireside conversations with the people who actually run the money. One practitioner, one hour, unfiltered, documented afterward as internal research briefs for our analysts.
The firm, tab by tab.
Trading
Six desks. One live book. Fundamentals-driven positions under formal risk constraints.
ExploreQuant
Model-driven, systematic, code-first. Four desks on shared engineering infrastructure.
ExploreSpeaker Series
Private fireside conversations with senior practitioners, hosted every semester.
ExploreThe Pitch
One name. One conviction. The winning desk splits the $1,000 prize.
ExploreThe Fund
Live capital, tracked quarterly. Strategy mandates reviewed by the Fund Council.
ExploreLeadership
Three Presidents, a full executive board, desk directors, and associates.
ExploreRelations
Corporate partnerships and alumni involvement, judges, mentors, speakers.
ExploreApply
Applications for the next cohort open at the start of the Fall 2026 semester.
DetailsThe rooms our members walk into.
Firms represented across the NWC Speaker Series, alumni relationships, and each recruiting cycle.
Six desks. One live book.
Fundamentals-driven, discretionary positions researched from the bottom up, managed under formal risk constraints written into our Articles of Operation. Every member holds a seat, a mandate, and a chain of accountability.
Long / Short Equity
Bottom-up research on individual equities, long high-conviction names, short overvalued or structurally broken companies. Sector rotation driven by the macro backdrop.
Event-Driven & Special Situations
M&A arbitrage, spin-offs, earnings-driven setups, activist shadows. When a catalyst creates a mispricing, this desk finds it and sizes it.
Global Macro
Interest rate views, FX pairs, commodities as macro proxies, central bank playbooks. The desk that trades the world, not just a ticker.
Credit & Distressed
IG/HY corporates, distressed debt approaching restructuring, CDS monitoring, credit cycle positioning. The desk that reads an indenture and builds recovery waterfalls.
TMT: Tech, Media & Telecom
Mega-cap tech, SaaS multiples, semiconductor cycles, AI infrastructure, streaming economics. Relative value and L/S within the sector that defines the market.
Wild Card: Digital Assets & Emerging
BTC/ETH macro thesis, tokenized real-world assets, pre-IPO secondaries, thematic plays on energy transition and longevity. One rotating wild card desk every year, different theme, same edge.
The model rules.
Model-driven, systematic, and code-first, four desks built on shared engineering infrastructure. Activated as technical membership and leadership are put in place.
Statistical Arbitrage
Statistical relationships between correlated securities, pairs trading, basket mean-reversion, cointegration-based signals. Market-neutral by construction.
ML / AI Alpha
Feature engineering on alternative data, NLP on earnings transcripts and filings, gradient boosting and neural signals for return prediction. The desk where code is the edge.
Systematic Macro
Trend following, carry strategies, and momentum across equities, rates, FX, and commodities. No discretionary overlay, the model rules.
Options & Volatility
Options pricing, implied vs. realized vol arbitrage, tail hedging, and structured payoff construction. The desk that prices risk correctly when everyone else is guessing.
Leads the Quant Division upon launch. Appointed by the Presidents. Owns the systematic book, the research agenda, and the desk build-out.
Owns the shared data infrastructure, backtesting framework, execution pipeline, and code standards. Every desk runs on their rails.
Portfolio-level risk analytics, factor exposure reporting, drawdown attribution, and regime detection. The quant division's conscience.
Senior practitioners. Unfiltered.
Private fireside conversations with the most senior names in finance, consulting, and venture, one practitioner, one hour. Hosted every semester, documented as internal research briefs.
Hernan Saenz
Global Head of Bain's Strategy & Transformation practice and co-author of The Founder's Mentality. Walks our analysts through how the world's best operators think about strategy when the macro picture is fogged in.
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James Root
Bain partner based in Hong Kong and author of The Archetype Effect. Presents the global research behind the six worker archetypes, and what actually unlocks motivation, productivity, and engagement at work.
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Alex Taussig
Partner at Lightspeed focused on consumer and marketplace investing. Backed Faire, Vinted, and Whatnot. Publishes the widely-read Drinking from the Firehose newsletter.
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Fred Reichheld
Creator of the Net Promoter Score and a Bain Fellow. Author of The Ultimate Question and Winning on Purpose. On loyalty economics and why enduring businesses are built by earning the devotion of the people they serve.
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Shaun Maguire
General Partner at Sequoia focused on seed and early-stage deep tech and defense. Early backer of SpaceX, X, and Bridge. Will share how Sequoia underwrites bets where the market doesn't yet exist.
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Michael Mankins
Leader in Bain's Strategy & Transformation and Organization practices. Author of Time, Talent, Energy. 35+ years advising on execution and organizational design.
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Matt Cronin
Michigan alum at a16z, where the firm's platform supports founders across every stage of company building. On how venture works behind the check, and the path from Ann Arbor into the industry.
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Jeff Verschleiser
Senior Advisor at Millennium and former Co-Head of Mortgage Trading at Bear Stearns and Head of Global Mortgages at Goldman Sachs. A firsthand account of 2008 from the center of the storm, on leverage, risk, and what really happens when markets seize.
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Rob Markey
Founder of Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing practice and co-author, with Fred Reichheld, of The Ultimate Question 2.0. On building businesses that compound through customer loyalty rather than churn.
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David Abrams
One of the most respected value investors of his generation, running Abrams Capital's concentrated book with famously little fanfare. On patience, conviction, and finding asymmetric value where others look away.
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Greg Lewis
McKinsey senior partner emeritus and Ross faculty. Decades advising leadership teams on strategy and organization, now teaching the next generation of operators at Michigan.
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Martin Reeves
Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute and author of Your Strategy Needs a Strategy and The Imagination Machine. On matching your strategy to your environment, and building companies that keep imagining.
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One name. One conviction. $1,000.
The capstone of every semester. Each desk commits to a single ticker, builds the full model, and defends it live in front of a panel of alumni and practitioners. The winning desk splits the $1,000 prize equally.
Product growth and innovation
The Willow evergreen partnership put three funds and $11.7B of combined AUM onto a curated wealth platform, widening Carlyle's reach into retail and mass-affluent capital without it having to build direct-to-consumer distribution itself.
Fee-related earnings up-cycle
FRE grew 16% year to date against a 10% target, with Q3 FRE at $312M, up 12% year over year. Behind it sits $2.6B to $2.9B of net accrued performance revenue waiting on the exit window to normalise.
Growth at mid-tier multiples
Trading at a discount to its largest peers while core revenue is expected to grow 8% this year and 18% next, with FRE margins guided to 45-50%. Correlation to the S&P Listed Private Equity Index is 0.791.
Distributable earnings lean heavily on performance fees, which depend on the M&A and exit environment staying open.
$90B of dry powder, 19% of AUM, still to deploy, against a book that is 44% assets and 50% fee-earning AUM.
Members learn the craft.
Analysts go through structured training, financial modeling, valuation frameworks, sector analysis, and how to build a defensible investment thesis from scratch.
Each desk picks a single name.
After training, every desk commits to one ticker. No backup ideas. No hedges presented separately. One name, one conviction.
Two weeks to build the pitch.
Three-statement models, valuation, scenario analysis. Desk directors review progress. The pitch deck is written in the desk's own voice.
Live pitch · judges decide.
Ten minutes per desk, twenty minutes of Q&A. Judges are alumni and practitioners. The winning desk splits the $1,000 prize equally.
“The Private Markets team showed up with a thesis that would've held up in a Monday morning meeting.”
“The Carlyle pitch stood out because they understood the capital structure, not just the headline multiple.”
Live capital. Real consequences.
The portfolio is built from the pitch competition, the Fund Council ranks every pitch, and the rankings drive construction. Performance is tracked and reported to members quarterly.
| Quarter | Index | QoQ |
|---|---|---|
| Fall 2025 · Inception | 100.0 | · |
| Winter 2026 | 112.0 | +12.0% |
| Spring 2026 | 121.0 | +8.0% |
| Summer 2026 · through July | 119.0 | −1.7% |
| Strategy | Division | Mandate |
|---|---|---|
Long / Short Equity |
Trading | Fundamental long-short equity across large-cap and mid-cap names. Thesis-driven with a 6–12 month horizon. Primary strategy for the Trading Division. |
Global Macro |
Trading | Top-down macro trades expressed through equities, rates, and FX proxies. FOMC, geopolitical, and commodity-driven. |
Event-Driven |
Trading | Earnings, M&A, regulatory catalysts. Short-duration, catalyst-specific position sizing. |
Systematic / Quant |
Quant | Alpha signals sourced from price action, cross-sectional momentum, and factor models. Backtested in Python. Live signals monitored weekly. |
Event Contracts |
Quant | Binary event markets on Kalshi and Polymarket. FOMC outcomes, elections, macro releases. Quantitative edge applied to regulated prediction markets. |
Leadership.
Three Presidents. A full executive board. Every seat earned, every appointment ratified under the Articles of Operation.
Put your name on a desk.
New Wave Capital pairs graded, ranked analyst talent with campus-scale reach. Sponsor the most senior speaker lineup in Ross history, put your brand in front of Michigan's finance community, and recruit from a pool that has already been tested.
- Resume book of ranked analysts
- Logo placement and recognition
- Ranking ballot at the Pitch Competition
- Everything in Network
- Hosted recruiting event on campus
- Coffee chats with top members
- Everything in Corporate
- Guaranteed fireside chat
- Judging seat at the Pitch Competition
- Branded workshop or tech talk
- Everything in Premier
- Your named desk
- Title sponsor of the Pitch Competition
- Industry exclusivity
Join the semester-end pitch panel. Grade analyst presentations alongside current desk directors. The highest-impact way to give back.
Share your story at a Wednesday mass meeting. 100+ members. Any background, buy side, sell side, VC, consulting, or quant. Reach out and we'll handle everything.
One-on-one mentorship with an assigned analyst. Two formal check-ins per semester plus informal availability. Match based on desk and career track.
Strategic advisors to fund leadership. Inform desk strategy, review processes, and help set the standard for the cohort. Limited to 6 seats.
Leaders & Best.
The firms where New Wave members have signed: banks, funds, and firms across the Street.
Reserve your seat.
Applications for the next cohort open at the start of the Fall 2026 semester. Reviewed by the Presidents and division leadership. Choose your division, tell us who you are, and make one honest pitch for yourself.
Curiosity that survives contact with a 10-K. Conviction you can defend under questioning. No finance experience required, the training program exists for a reason.
The board reviews on a rolling basis. You'll hear from us at your Michigan email.