A finance student researching, building, and experimenting across AI, economics, and markets.
About
I'm Karesa.
I'm currently finishing my MSc in Finance & Accounting at Imperial. Before that, UC Irvine, where I led the equity team at the student investment fund, co-founded a Scholars of Finance chapter, used my platform as a Peer Academic Advisor to advocate for transfer students, lobbied on their behalf at the California State Senate, and launched events and initiatives for the transfer community. Then, between UCI and Imperial, six months and ten countries on my own — the stretch that taught me the most about myself, and about handling the unfamiliar.
These days I split my time between understanding the macroeconomic environment and its connections and implications across the global economy, building with Claude, reading, traveling, working on my master's thesis, and exploring more of London.
BA Business Administration — UC Irvine · Dean's Honor List
Fundamental work
Rightmove plc A DCF and relative valuation of the UK's dominant, asset-light property portal at a 70% EBITDA margin. Concluded BUY on a blended 598p target — roughly 44% above the prevailing price.
Buy-side LBO simulation A live auction across three targets: full LBO models with EBITDA normalisation, debt sizing, and covenant design, each bid under a 15% IRR floor. Won Star Hotels at €1.28bn (9.3x) by pairing a margin-of-safety price with a more aggressive debt package.
Succession Capital A buyout fund thesis targeting profitable, founder-owned German Mittelstand companies facing succession with no heir. Sets out the investment criteria, value-creation plan, returns, and fund structure — as a long-term operator, not an asset-stripper.
↗ M&ANovozymes / Chr. Hansen An NPV analysis of the all-stock biosolutions merger: synergies worth ~€1.7bn against a premium ~€1.3bn larger — value-destructive even on full delivery. Traces the 15% announcement-day drop through EPS dilution, a principal–principal governance conflict, and above-precedent pricing.
↗ Simulation · Asset managementGoldman Sachs AM simulation A live buy-side markets simulation with Goldman Sachs Asset Management (via AmplifyME): allocating and tactically managing a multi-asset book under live price action and breaking news, within client constraints. Finished in the 90th percentile for return and the 99th for buy-side risk management across a 69-person cohort, on roughly $1.75m of simulated P&L.
↗Research
Academic and empirical work — a master's thesis in progress, and an earlier literature review.
Does quantitative tightening deflate asset classes asymmetrically? My MSc thesis: an empirical study of whether liquidity-sensitive assets reprice first and hardest under QT, tested across the 2017–19 and 2022–24 episodes on FRED and Bloomberg data.
High-Impact Practices & transfer-student career readiness A review of the research on High-Impact Practices — internships, mentoring, networking — and their effect on transfer-student outcomes, with a focus on first-generation students. Written as a Peer Academic Advisor at UC Irvine, drawing on the transfer self-efficacy framework and the gap in the literature on post-integration career readiness.
↗Systematic work
A backtest tells you what would have worked. Running it live — even on a small account — tells you what actually does. These are the systems I build to find out. Public demos use sample data; credentials stay private.
Execution agent A multi-strategy system: regime-gating decides when the book is open, with a reasoning layer that filters likely traps before sizing.
↗ Research toolPattern Reconnaissance Station A cross-asset engine that scans lagged correlations to surface cross-domain signals — dominoes — before they reach a live book.
↗A window into the systems
Macro Notes
A dated record of how my macro view developed — built bottom-up from a single name into a broader framework. Each note is the thesis as it stood at the time.