In June, we had the pleasure of welcoming Noah Peddie to Leisure Capital Management as our summer intern. I’ve never been a believer in giving interns ‘intern work’—the boring stuff none of us really want to spend our time doing—so we made an effort to elevate his time with us, both to help him understand this profession and to give him a firsthand look at how we serve our clients every day.
Personally, one of the most rewarding parts of my work isn’t just managing wealth—it’s also passing on what I’ve learned over the years. Today, I believe that’s more important than ever. Across our profession, advisors are getting older, while the families we serve increasingly span multiple generations. At LCM, we’ve been very intentional about building a team that can serve our clients and their families well into the future, but I also believe those of us who have spent decades in this business have a responsibility to help prepare the next generation of professionals, wherever their careers may take them. That’s part of why we made space for Noah this summer.
For us, that meant giving him the opportunity to dig into the numbers, ask questions, sit in on our conversations, and see how decisions get made. Our hope was that, by summer’s end, he would have the knowledge to form and defend a real investment opinion of his own.
One thing that some would-be financial professionals struggle to grasp is that the numbers matter, but the greatest value we offer clients is about so much more. Technology and AI have made accessing and processing financial data easier than ever, but simply having more information doesn’t always make real-world decisions easier. Our role is to uncover the meaning from that data to figure out what really matters. What are the numbers telling us? Are our assumptions correct? Are there any risks hiding under the surface? And most importantly, how does the data shape the big picture for the real people on the other side of those numbers—the families, businesses, goals, and lives that their wealth is intended to support.
Noah began with the numbers themselves, diving headfirst into our Bloomberg terminal, where he quickly developed an impressive level of fluency with a complex tool that, for some, can take years to master. He then applied that skill in a practical way, building out spreadsheet analysis to help evaluate our fixed-income strategies and current portfolio positioning. We’re big on connecting the analysis to the decisions, not just running the numbers, and Noah took to that process naturally.
That leap was impressive, but what impressed me even more was Noah’s confidence when he presented his findings to our Investment Committee—an environment where the conversations can be a bit daunting for all of us. It’s one thing to feel comfortable with your conclusions when working through an analysis on your own. It’s quite another to sit in a room with people who have spent decades in the investment business and explain what you found, why it matters, and how you got there. Noah was prepared, knew his material, and handled the questions that came his way remarkably well.
For his final project, Noah took on original equity research on one of the funds in our model, developing his own point of view, backing it with research, and defending his conclusions to the team. The analytical rigor was there, but what I enjoyed just as much was his curiosity: he wanted to understand why an investment behaved the way it did, and what we might be missing.
That curiosity extended beyond investments and into people. Noah made a point of learning from everyone in our office, asking about their roles, their experiences, and how the pieces fit together. That matters to me, because while the technical work is essential, our real work is about listening closely enough to understand what a family actually wants their wealth to accomplish. Two families with similar balance sheets can have completely different priorities, and that human side of the profession is difficult to teach in a classroom.
Most of us can probably remember someone who took the time to teach us when we were starting out—someone who answered our questions, invited us into a meeting, or trusted us with something before we were sure we were ready. Those opportunities stay with you, and eventually you realize you have the chance to do the same for someone else. An internship like this only works when people make the time to explain what they’re doing, invite someone into the conversation, or simply turn around from their desk and say, “Come take a look at this.” I’m grateful to our team for doing exactly that for Noah.
Noah heads back to Washington University in St. Louis this fall for his senior year. I hope he leaves us knowing more about investments, but also with a better understanding of what this profession can offer and what it asks of the people who choose to make a career of it. The learning wasn’t entirely one-sided, either—having a smart young person in the office asking why you do what you do forces you to explain your thinking, and occasionally reconsider it. If Noah represents the kind of young people coming into this profession, I’d say we’re in pretty good hands.
