Analyst - use free time to think of strategies
Hi Everyone,
I need your opinion on this.
I'm in a 500m to 1b HF. When I came over, the stated description of my role was the usual "to support PMs and may transition to strategy development." I'm aware that HFs use that pitch to tempt analysts over but actually don't intent to get them into investing.
So far, my life has been pretty relax. All tasks handled down to me have been support, ie sort out price feeds, download data. It takes me half a day to get it down after which I just wait a day or two for a formal assignment. Basically, I got a lot of free time and it kindda seems this is gonna be this like for a while.
What your view on this. Since it was in my description to eventual go into investing, but it seems I'm a victim of the usual case where PMs won't nurture analysts, I go on my own using my free time to research investment ideas while none of the managers specifically stated that as my task.
Thank you.
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Sorry, what's your question? Should you show initiative and use your free time for smth useful?
With my goal of getting closer to investing side of things, as opposed to just support, should I:
1) Walk into my manager's office and say "Good morning. Yeah, thing's been going great. So .... you know ... part of my description states generating investment ideas. I don't know what's the learning policy for analyst here. So ... when can I expect to learn some of the fund's strategies?"
2) Keep my mouth shut. Do my support tasks. And with whatever free time I have, about two days in the week, just go off on my own to watch prices on Bloomberg, test out some investment ideas on Excel, read research notes. I wouldn't care when my manager passes my screen and think to himself, "Wait, I don't remember explicitly asking this analyst to research investment ideas."
IMHO, and I have a strong opinion on this, since I have been through it, you need a bit of a mix of both, with more emphasis on the latter.
Firstly, excel at your support tasks. Go above and beyond if you can, underpromise and overdeliver, make stuff more efficient and free the PMs' to do their thing. Furthermore, be 100% reliable with all these responsibilities. That's, by far, the best way to make sure that you have the buy in for whatever comes next and to make yourself indispensable.
Secondly, observe what people do and gently ask questions. Most people, unless they're assholes, will happily share their thoughts with you. If you're lucky and any of the people you speak to share their process, rather than sporadic views, you've struck gold. If you can help those people with their process, that's your first step towards an apprenticeship of sorts. If not, you have to get creative and try to develop yourself, which is much harder and requires a lot more hard work and commitment.
Thirdly, do NOT do what you've described to your manager. Come to them with something that they would be eager to say yes to and that makes their life easier, instead of presenting them with another issue do deal with. Ideally, find something that straddles the line between trading and support, where you can add value. Develop along those lines, emphasizing the trading bits more as time goes on, and you have a good shot, IMHO.
Obviously, a certain amount of luck is necessary, but if you do your part, you should definitely help your chances.
Hi Martinghoul,
Thank you for your responses. They are insightful and encouraging. I hope I can just ask for a few more comments as I know your extra bit of advice will go a long way. I did banking before so this is my first fund. Thus, I don't know how its done at other funds.
1) Is it almost always unstructured for analysts at sub 1b, 20 people shops? I can imagine the PMs doing their thing day in and day out and the last thing on their mind is "I need to give 10 mins of my time to nurture that analyst". The reason I'm asking because there're broadly two ways my situation could end. One, I'll always be that analyst sitting in the corner not assigned anything meaningful. Two, follow your track and with luck, come under the wing of one of the PMs. Compare this with larger funds where you know there's that Analyst, Associate, VP thing.
2) Can you give me a rough timeline when if I don't come under the wing of a PM, I should concede that I won't ever? Further, does this ever relates to that "time debt" an analyst needs to pay before he does anything meaningful. For all I know, it could be convention for a new analyst to just be a dead weight for a mandatory 1 year before he gets exposed to the core stuff of the business. ( This was actually said somewhere in WSO ). If that's the case, then really, I just gotta stick around for months.
3) Lastly, when you "do NOT do what you've described to your manager", where you referring to 1 or 2 in my initial post. Anything wrong spending half a day to try to develop myself by individual research when I really got nothing formally assigned to me.
1) I can't be certain, but I would guess you're correct. It doesn't necessarily work like this at larger funds, but the ones that do have a process for developing people generally do make the PMs put some effort into it. The idea is that the PM gets more efficient (eventually), while the analyst gets exposure and grows. Obviously, a lot also depends on the personalities.
2) Well, it can vary with your starting point, as well as all the other specifics of the situation. I've lived through two episodes similar to what you describe and they both lasted roughly 1 year. As to the "time debt", I don't think it's convention per se and I am not sure there's anything mandatory. I view it as simply a function of time needed for socialization and indoctrination.
3) I meant don't do the thing you've described in 1). Don't challenge your manager to come up with stuff for you to do.
Martinghoul, thank you. I've learnt a lot from your two posts. I know how to better spin my approach come Monday. Have a great weekend.
Hi Martinghoul,
I just want to update you with my progress. So I did as you described, paying close attention to the fine balance between developing myself and carrying out existing tasks with 100% reliability, and it seemed to work. Management got me working on a new project as of next week. I'll state it first.
It is to develop models to forecast volatility, and if it works, it'll find its way into existing firm models to minimize loses, where presumably they'll use my model to optimally close trades before volatility kicks in.
Would you consider this an "alpha generating", or at least not a BO / MO project? To me, I can't ask for much. But given my progress - top US school, four years in a ~1b fund, I'm happy even if you consider this average.
Now I guess the hard part is to frame my results that is within company culture, yet provide that new insight that is valuable to them.
Thanks.
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