About the program
The 2026 summer internship brought 46 students from 33 schools into a working compliance consultancy — not into a syllabus. Interns joined while client engagements were live, and the program was built around that. They sat in the weekly meeting, prepared for the exam that opens the industry to them, made real allocation decisions in a simulated market, and produced a deliverable that went to a client. A smaller group worked onsite.
Three work streams ran through the summer: preparation for the Securities Industry Essentials exam, a seven-week simulated trading contest, and a research and production project for Monahan & Roth. The report closes with the awards made at the end of the program.
Quinnipiac was the largest single source of interns, sending eight; the remaining 38 came from 32 other schools. No capital was at risk at any point — the trading contest ran on simulated accounts throughout.
Licensing & exam progress
Nine interns have passed the Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) exam, and every intern we have heard from either studied for it or is studying now. Exam status is confirmed for 15 of the 46.
Confirmed SIE passes
Nine interns across seven schools: Matt Marinich (U Tampa), Aleah Lazar (Monmouth), Vinny Villani (Quinnipiac), Aljay Rosario (Rowan), Miguel Mendoza (BYU-Idaho), Carlos Palau (U Miami), Jinwook Kim (BU), Dylan Hutton (Quinnipiac), and Brandon Cuccaro (Quinnipiac).
One additional license was reported: Vinny Villani (Quinnipiac) holds a New York Accident & Health Insurance Agent/Broker license, Series 17-55, passed in May 2025.
Simulated trading contest
Twenty-three interns each managed a $100,000 simulated portfolio for seven weeks. As a group they returned +8.75% and beat the S&P 500 benchmark — though a single outsized result carried most of that margin.
How to read the annualized figures: the contest ran 48 days. Annualized returns extrapolate that window to a full year at a constant compounding rate — a standard conversion, but over a period this short it magnifies luck as readily as skill. The period return is the honest measure of what happened; the annualized figure is context, not a forecast.
Excluding the winning account, the remaining 22 interns returned +3.49% in aggregate (+29.8% annualized) — still ahead of the benchmark, but by roughly one percentage point over the period rather than six.
Finished with more than double his starting capital — over six times the return of the next-highest intern. His was the most options-heavy account in the field: 18 of 37 trades were options positions, concentrated in index and energy contracts. Ending balance: $224,519.61. Annualized figure not meaningful at this scale.
The full field
| # | Participant | School | Ending Balance | Period | Annualized |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arvid Berdica | Virginia Tech | $224,519.61 | +124.52% | +46,781% |
| 2 | Ansh Lahoti | Wash U | $116,270.21 | +16.27% | +214.7% |
| 3 | Dan Raymond | Quinnipiac | $115,663.43 | +15.66% | +202.4% |
| 4 | Ryan Carroll | Quinnipiac | $111,083.07 | +11.08% | +122.4% |
| 5 | Alexander Neiconi | UGA | $109,020.38 | +9.02% | +92.8% |
| 6–23 | Remaining 18 accounts (12 up / 6 down) | 18 schools | $1,824,765.73 | +1.38% | +11.0% |
Positions 6–23 are shown as one combined line: 18 accounts funded at $100,000 each, $1,800,000 in aggregate. Individual balances for that group are held on file. Ranked individually, positions 6 through 23 ran from +8.56% down to −4.93% — the full spread is in the PDF.
Where participants came from
Eighteen schools were represented among the 23 traders. Quinnipiac accounted for six of the 23; every other school sent one: Virginia Tech, Wash U, UGA, Caldwell, U Tampa, UMass, Binghamton, Monmouth, U Wyoming, U Buffalo, Drexel, BU, Rowan, BYU-Idaho, U Tenn, Clark U, and Fordham.
Activity did not predict finish
Trade files were submitted by 14 of the 23 interns, covering 525 trades. Plotting how much each traded against where they finished shows no relationship: the most active account placed 275 trades and finished last, while the fifth-place finisher placed three.
Reference accounts
Three non-intern accounts traded alongside the group and are excluded from every intern figure above:
| Account | Role | Return | Ending Balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Martin | S&P 500 benchmark | +2.51% | $102,509.15 · +20.7% annualized |
| Rifton Westby | Industry Professional | +20.54% | $120,542.21 · +314.0% annualized |
| Andrew Lambert | Industry Professional | +14.97% | $114,973.29 · +188.9% annualized |
Methodology notes
- Scope: Twenty-three interns held funded simulated accounts. Three further accounts — the S&P 500 benchmark and two non-intern traders — are reported separately and excluded from all intern statistics.
- Window: The earliest recorded trade was July 8 and the last account activity August 25, 2026 — 48 days.
- Benchmark: The +2.51% comparison is the program lead's S&P 500 tracking account, run on the same platform over the same window, rather than an external index quote.
Monahan & Roth research project
Interns built a library of realistic fund and investment marketing communications — deliberately non-compliant — for use as a test corpus against a client's automated advertising-review technology.
The brief
Monahan & Roth asked for promotional material covering three product areas: UCITS and AIFs (the EU equivalents of public and private pooled funds), crypto asset services, and ESG or "sustainable" investing. Each piece was to read as genuine marketing while breaching the rules that govern it — MiFID II and the ESMA marketing requirements at EU level, the additional national rules imposed by individual regulators, and the Conduct of Business Sourcebook (COBS) in the United Kingdom.
Jurisdictions
National Competent Authorities are the EU's per-country regulators — roughly the equivalent of state regulators in the United States — and each layers its own marketing requirements over the EU baseline. Germany, Italy, Belgium and France were prioritised; material for any EU NCA was acceptable.
Source material
Two ESMA publications anchored the work, since both set out what national regulators expect of fund marketing — which makes them equally useful as a guide to what a non-compliant communication looks like: ESMA34-1921782652-2033, Report to EU institutions on national rules governing marketing requirements of funds (2024), and ESMA35-335435667-5931, Final Report on the 2023 Common Supervisory Action and Mystery Shopping Exercise on marketing.
Method
Two production routes were accepted, and interns used both: Adaptation — locating a genuine advertisement online, converting it to Word, then removing the compliant disclaimers and substituting non-compliant claims in their place; and Generation — drafting the communication from scratch with an AI assistant, working from the rule set the piece was meant to breach. The deliverable is a paired set: for each jurisdiction, a compliant advertisement alongside a non-compliant counterpart, so the review technology can be scored on both false negatives and false positives.
Why the exercise works
Breaking a rule deliberately requires knowing precisely which element of a communication makes it compliant — the disclaimer that must appear, the risk warning that must be given equal prominence, the performance claim that must be qualified. It is a sharper test of understanding than producing a compliant advertisement, where a house template can carry an intern who has not read the rulebook.
Intern awards
Seven interns were recognized at the close of the program. Awards reached them by three routes: the trading contest balance winner received one on results, three were chosen by management, and every intern who worked onsite received one automatically.
| Intern | School | Award | SIE | Contest Finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arvid Berdica | Virginia Tech | Balance Winner, Trading Contest | Not recorded | 1st · +124.52% |
| Ryan Carroll | Quinnipiac | Best Trading Strategy | Not recorded | 4th · +11.08% |
| Vinny Villani | Quinnipiac | CEO Selection | Passed | 17th · +0.46% |
| Aljay Rosario | Rowan | CEO Selection | Passed | 18th · −1.10% |
| Dan Raymond | Quinnipiac | Onsite | Retaking | 3rd · +15.66% |
| Matt Marinich | U Tampa | Onsite | Passed | 7th · +7.30% |
| Sahan Nath | Fordham | Onsite | In preparation | 23rd · −4.93% |
How the awards were decided
- Onsite · 3 recipients: Awarded to every intern who worked onsite over the summer.
- Balance Winner · 1 recipient: Awarded on the trading contest result, to the highest ending balance.
- Management selection · 3 recipients: Best Trading Strategy and CEO Selection, chosen by the leadership team.
- Schools · 5 represented: Quinnipiac accounts for three of the seven recipients.
Recipients finished 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 17th, 18th and 23rd in the trading contest — the full width of the field. Only one award was decided by returns; the rest followed presence, method and judgment, and the spread makes that visible. Best Trading Strategy went to a fourth-place finisher rather than the winner, recognising method over outcome, and the intern placed last by balance was also the most active trader in the program at 275 trades.
Closing thoughts
For the past two decades, our internship program has focused on providing real-world experience, simulated trading, and helping interns obtain industry licenses. Over the years, we've noticed that getting licensed leads to getting hired. This summer's program produced more new industry licenses than any previous class.
This year's program included an international research project, professional-presence and network coaching, weekly meetings, research projects, and simulated trading. What stood out most was the individual and group returns on simulated trading — the group as a whole, and the biggest gainer in the contest, more than doubled the portfolio in 48 days.
Thank you to all of our strategic partners and staff for their support, and most importantly, thank you to all of the interns who participated in our program. It doesn't stop here — keep in touch, stay active in the community, and I look forward to watching your continued success.
— David Jaindl Martin, Chief Executive Officer, Compliers
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