I'm interested in portfolio management. Is a CFA required? I'm leaning more towards the MBA because it offers the most job opportunities with numerous different fields. It doesn't matter to me whether I work at a small fund or large fund in portfolio management. I genuinely find the job interesting. What's a good pathway? What are the typical requirements? Also, what's the total compensation range?
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I don't work on the buy-side and can't really tell you. But I can tell you what as a banker on the sell-side thinks of fund managers with CFA. Buy-side fund managers that I deal with tend to have CFA. They are big funds - not a small shop with a CIO and a couple of analysts. What surprises me is some relationship managers/institutional sales in these firms also have CFA. When their email footer (or signature) has XXX XXX, CFA, Investment Manager XXX Fund, I have genuine respect for them (for completing 3 exams for which you have to study months and months and having worked in a relevant position for 3 years).
Hopefully someone who made a switch from the sell-side to the buy-side with MBA can tell you more about requirements.
My two cents: The CFA is far more useful for learning relevant material, and an MBA (from a top school, anyway) is far more useful for actually breaking into the industry. Even with the low pass rates for the CFA, there are still a lot more charterholders than there are PM and analyst positions.
And to j-phone's statements about relationship managers with CFAs, one relationship manager at a top fund company actually told me that at that company they push for all client services people to get the CFA (to give them a strong baseline of knowledge) whereas they don't push it on the actual portfolio managers (because they all know what they need to anyway).
If you want to be at the very top shops you do both. I have networked with several PMs at elite firms and have a family friend who is a CFO at a very elite fund company (like #1 ranked) and every single one of them have both.
If you want to go into Asset Management, a lot of the big funds place heavy emphasis on CFA (a la T-Rowe). Hedge funds it might be a small plus, but generally it won't matter all that much. Neither is as valuable as investing experience (buy-side preferably, but sell-side ER works too). If you're not in finance, you can either network your way in or go to b-school and bust your butt to get an internship. CFA will do very little for you if you don't have the relevant experience to back it up.
The PM's where I work have both FWIW. I would think a CFA is definitely required, while a MBA is just gravy.
get that CFA. Its more valuable in the Asset Management and equity research world
Both is definitely preferred. For large shops that formally recruit MBAs, the CFA will def help you stand out and get you closed-listed for interviews at most places. That said, if you have the right background pre-MBA, you can still get in the door and work toward the CFA once you're there. i've seen lots of coworkers go this route. You will be busy though, so I think there's a lot of value to tackling it early in your career.
Like 75% of the PMs at my firm have both. The rest have CFAs.
I guess it depends what kind of fund (read: strategy) you would be joining, whether it would be a big/small fund (read: an MBA might be useful for marketing/fund raising purposes) and what's your current level of financial knowledge. I would personally go with a CFA as an MBA is not necessary for portfolio management, but admittedly quite a few PMs walk around with both.
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