Investment Strategy roles
Hello,
I am considering a career in AM, ideally Fixed Income Invesmtent.
These are FT offers, not internships.
I have an offer from a large AM firm with around $500bn AUM. It is for their Real Asset (basically Real Estate) strategy team.
From what I can tell, I won't be doing actual Investing. Mainly just quantiative macro/industry research and publishing the research in-house.
Do people from these roles ever move into Investment teams?
2nd question would be, is Real Assets/Estate to Fixed Income a challenging move?
I also have an offer to intern in Investment Risk at a firm with $1 trillion AUM, covering Equities, Fixed Income and ESG.
Would my transition at $1tn firm be easier from their Risk team to Fixed Income Invesmtent?
Any help/insight appreciated.
For context this is in Europe if it matters.
I would advise you to take the strategy role - there's a thread on product management/strategy that you can look at, it's pretty recent, to give you a broader sense of how it sits within firms (as a very general matter, of course). I don't know how Europe differs from the US - but as a general rule it's challenging, not impossible, to move towards investments from a strategy role. You can do it certainly - it will take a lot of patience, networking, a CFA wouldn't hurt and absolutely killing it in the role you have. Where you can - I'd try and take on projects that look more like investing than, say, marketing or client service. By way of example, that would be doing more the research, quantitative support for a piece vs. defining the topic, thinking about how it should be positioned across a specific channel, how does it support the growth goals, etc. (though you should also become conversant in that).
There's no move that won't be challenging, unless you start in the area you want to end in. I could tell you that real estate looks more like fixed income, has more principles than fixed income than, say, equities or whatever - but the reality is that you need to absolutely kill it in your role, prove to others that you are a valuable contributor and eventually earn a shot to leverage your network, social capital and skill set to try a transition. My view is that you should pick the team, firm and culture that you feel meshes best with you to give yourself the best shot.
100% spot on comment!
Any advice in how to differentiate in this sort of role? Is it work ethic/attention to detail/personability or is it more skills driven (ie, have competency in technical skills that an investment team may find useful like certain modelling/research/thesis generation)?
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