Where young analysts begin.
Global Research Fellowship is a selective finance research program for high-school students. Over an eight-week cohort, students study markets, macroeconomics, capital flows, and risk under close supervision, then turn that work into original research they can actually defend.
A lot of people hear “finance” and picture a stock chart going up. Our students tend to go a few layers below that.
Why did a currency move overnight? Why is one country suddenly under pressure? Why can a single sentence from a central bank move billions of dollars? Why do investors trust one market and punish another?
GRF was built for that student: the curious one, the slightly intense one, the one who reads a headline about rates, debt, China, oil, banks, or private markets and immediately has five more questions.
We pair those students with mentors from academic research and institutional finance, then help them turn curiosity into a serious project: a sharp question, real evidence, and a view the student understands well enough to argue under pressure.
Why GRF exists
Most finance-curious students are left to figure it out alone.
Many capable students read the headlines, follow the markets, and sense that something important is happening. Turning that instinct into serious research is the part that usually goes untaught.
A project might begin with one honest question: why is the yen weak, why are regional banks under pressure, why does private credit suddenly matter, why does oil jump the moment politics gets messy?
Good question. Then comes the harder part.
Which sources actually matter? Which evidence is useful and which is just noise dressed up as insight? Where is the real argument hiding? This is where a strong mentor changes everything.
GRF gives students the room to build that muscle. They learn to ask sharper questions, read more carefully, argue more clearly, and revise without falling in love with their first draft.
The standard is simple: a clear idea, sound evidence, and work the student fully understands and can stand behind.
Useful because the work is real.
Strong applications are easier to build when a student has done something specific, demanding, and intellectually honest. GRF gives students a serious academic interest they can discuss with clarity — in essays, interviews, activity lists, and conversations with counselors.
A clearer intellectual lane.
Students do more than say they are interested in finance. They develop a defined research question, examine evidence, and build an argument around a real market problem.
Something worth talking about.
A strong project gives students material they can explain naturally: what they studied, why it mattered, what changed their thinking, and where their conclusion landed.
The value is in the work.
GRF does not promise admissions outcomes. The point is to help students produce serious work they understand deeply enough to defend without sounding coached.
Finance is our lane.
Students build projects inside focused areas of finance and macroeconomics. These are starting points rather than set topics. The real work is finding the question worth chasing.
Macro Strategy
Credit Markets
FX & Sovereign Risk
Geopolitical Finance
Private Markets
Banking Stress
Energy & Commodities
Capital Flows
The person across the table matters.
Students work with mentors who understand research, argument, evidence, and finance. Some come from academia, some from institutional finance. What they share is judgment, and they bring it directly to the student’s work.
Professors and researchers.
Mentors who know how a strong research question gets shaped, tested, challenged, and made better.
Institutional finance backgrounds.
Finance mentors who have worked around markets, macro, and institutional capital, and understand how real decisions get made.
High standards, clear feedback.
Students get pushed on the question, the evidence, the logic, and the writing. That pressure is where the work gets better.
Join the research desk.
GRF is for high-school students who want to understand finance before college, work closely with serious mentors, and build research they can actually defend.