Not every Wall Street rookie gets a market like this. For one new macro analyst at Balyasny, his first year on the trading floor lined up with surging volatility — a backdrop that can be both daunting and unusually rewarding.
That’s been the last 12 months for Francesco Catanzariti, an analyst on Balyasny Asset Management’s macro trading team.
He started at the firm as an intern in 2023, an exclusive cohort that accepts about 0.5% of applicants. Only about half of that summer class received a full-time job offer, and Catanzariti made the cut. Now, at 24, he has finished his master’s degree at Princeton and sits at the center of the action at Balyasny, which manages $25 billion in assets.
Catanzariti spoke with Business Insider about what it’s been like to start his career in a volatile market that’s been characterized by tariff turmoil. Balyasny, which as a multistrategy firm diversifies its bets among various investment strategies, has gained 7.8% for 2025 as of the end of July.
The questions and answers below — which range from what he’s learned by watching senior traders above handle chaos to examples of his day-to-day tasks — have been edited for length and clarity.
BI: What a year to start your career at a hedge fund. What has it been like?
FC: It is an incredibly fun place to be, and especially this year, with everything that’s happening in the markets, it was really fascinating to see people react. It was for sure a big learning experience.
Of course, I didn’t have trading responsibility from day one. That was good because there was a gradual process from the internship. I got more and more involved with what the team does, all the way up to helping them develop models, book trades, and things like that — growing step by step.
I think we have a very good network of experts, and it was really helpful to navigate that and listen to different voices. I saw how my team had a more semi-systematic approach, and in particular, how long-term projects take a step back during market turmoil. They try to take advantage of the specific opportunity that presents itself at that moment.
BI: What did you learn from watching experienced traders and investors navigate this year?
FC: The growth mindset that the senior people have — and how they can deal with many different situations and asset classes. This is something I’m trying to develop, but of course, still have a lot of room to grow. As an analyst, you focus much more on a specific asset or a specific project, and you don’t think in terms of the overall portfolio.
It was fascinating to see PMs expressing views on different things and changing those views based on the circumstances. Being able to think quickly and do some approximation — maybe not caring as much about having the exact results or exact price, but rather wanting some heuristic, some intuition. And if they see that there’s not an opportunity, they don’t keep obsessing about it. That deep humility it’s something that really surprised me.
BI: What does a normal day at work look like for you? What does the day-to-day work of a first-year analyst look like?
FC: My tasks are very diverse. I have my own long-term projects that could be, for example, implementing some new changes, visualizing something for my team, or building a dashboard.
Other things could be fixing and improving our code base.
There are other fun and academic tasks, for example, researching, looking at a paper, a specific model, a particular asset class, and explaining the returns. I’ll write code, present the results to my team, and explain models and interesting patterns I notice.
When the other analysts present a project for their manager, we’ll look together at the risk, evaluate it based on the historical simulation, and how we can restructure our portfolio to try to take advantage of the particular situation or to be exposed to a particular catalyst. I also listen in when we have experts and consultants come to speak — learning what they say about specific events or a specific economic situation.
When we trade, I help with reporting the trades, keeping track of them, and interfacing with the middle office for booking. I’m exposed to all the different parts of what my team does. And that provides for a lot of organic learning, which I’m sure will be helpful for the future.
BI: When reflecting on year one, going from student and intern to full-time analyst, what has been unexpected for you?
FC: How much BAM invests in technology. I think that’s something I was really impressed by, even when I was an intern. My internship was a few months before all the hype about LLMs and AI, and we already had our own implementation of LLMs. Seeing the evolution over time, and the tools that we have access to now — it’s incredible because it effectively means the amount of work you can do is multiplied.
Another aspect is, apart from the learning, I can totally see the impact that I have on my team.
BI: So, after the year you’ve had, are you more or less interested in sticking with macro long term?
FC: Definitely more interested. You can combine so many things together, which gives it so much breadth. You incorporate your views about macroeconomics and geopolitics, but you can also try to implement a mathematical technique or study a particular machine learning approach.
When I was in undergrad and I was more interested in investing long short equity, that was missing there. I was just looking at the financial statement analysis and looking at specific companies, but it was difficult to think about all the different factors that were impacting a company from the outside. Here, you have exposure to these factors and you try to look at them. You can develop as much quantitative skill as you want and always be up to date with what’s happening in the world, which I think is fantastic.
I’m passionate in general about following current events, but this — I can make it part of my job. And on top of that, I can apply more quantitative techniques, which is something that I’m interested in. So, for sure, I’m more and more in love with the industry and with the sector.
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