I work as an investment analyst for a retail investment management firm which manages separately managed accounts for HNWs. A lot of what I do is equity research (in addition to preference shares, retail bonds, investment trusts and open-end funds) and many of the companies i meet with are through group meetings alongside analysts at fund management firms.
I would like to move into the fund management industry in the near future (partially for comp, but also because i'm getting sick of managing capital gains in taxable portfolios and other retail investor related BS) and I am wondering if anyone has any advice about how i could do this based on my current role?
I focus on domestic equities (in particular small-cap) and my boss is a former investment trust fund manager, so I've been "schooled" in the same style of bottom-up fundamental analysis (with a generous helping of macro-economic research and technicals), which i believe is similar to the skill-set required for an analyst at a fund.
I guess what I am asking is how can I move into the institutional fund management side of the business with my current experience? I do worry that because I am at a retail investor focused firm I will get labelled in a similar way to the "back office" i.e. close to being good enough for the institutional side but not quite good enough.
I've got the fundamental analysis side down (many of the stocks I've picked have generated strong returns and i'm about to sit CFA level 3), but I don't model companies like other bigger firms do and I think this may also be a disadvantage. I've done a course on creating valuation models (BIWS) and I do often break down the sell side analysts DCF models on calls in my head and question their assumptions to get a better understanding of the companies I'm looking at. It's just that the Excel modelling is not something I do in my current role (although i've got a pretty good working knowledge of Excel - VLOOKUPS, pivot tables, basic macros etc.) and we often base our assumptions on the consensus and adjust the sell-side models to suit our needs rather than build our own from scratch.
Anyway...it's a Saturday night, and i've a few Macallan's down me already, so perhaps i've spewed a load of shit, but if anyone has any thoughts then i'm interested to hear them.
Cheers!
