Asset Management exit options vs Investment Banking
From where I am sitting (admittedly in a very inexperienced chair) IBD exit options seem quite clear: PE and/or Hedge Funds. The latter option, especially, looks like a shift to the buy-side. Given that AM pros are already on the buy-side, are AM exit options similar? and if so, would an asset manager, particularly one who went down the CFA route, find it easier to secure a role in a hedge fund or PE fund than, say, an investment banker?
It's not about having a high/low opinion of exit options. It's about knowing what you want. If you know there's nothing in the world you'd rather do than AM, then go AM. The fact is, very few people know at age 20-22 that AM is what they want to do without question. This is compounded by the fact that AM and equity HFs right now are struggling as a whole with fee pressure (you almost never hear of HF's charging 2 and 20 anymore or AM's charging 100 bps; at my AM we charge about 50-75 bps depending on the client, and I know this is a general trend across the industry). From the shift from active to passive, which is screwing a lot of active (especially closet indexers), AM positions are shrinking relatively rapidly, and the growing impact of AI will cull the industry again. AM's best days are behind us.
That's why it's so critical to know this is what you want to do. For a 22 year old, this is rarely feasible. HF's have other strategies than just public equity & debt, so there's also the private side where you see funds like Oaktree or Elliott investing in, but that's also a very saturated market. This is why IBD is a great option for someone coming out of college, you get two years of training that can help you pursue whatever you want (PE, HF, Corp Dev etc.), which you can decide later, now with actual experience and modeling ability.
Also, CFA is rarely important for HFs. It's more important for AM.