SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) - In the dog-eat-dog world of hedge funds, giving an internship to a 16-year-old is almost unheard of. But when local talent is hard to find, teaching a minor how to generate alpha can be a worthwhile investment.

And so last year, Raffles Girls' School student Cao Yi Ke spent two weeks at Modular Asset Management, a nearly US$1 billion (S$1.34 billion) Singaporean hedge fund spun out of Millennium Management. She crunched data on spreadsheets, chatted with veterans and watched nerve-racking meetings where money managers defended their investment ideas from peers.