Exits from public equities

I am an undergrad who will likely be starting his career in NYC / Boston long only equities. I know it's a great job and I would not want to exit. However, I'm interested in returning to Seattle, my hometown, later in life. As far as I can tell, there are very few opportunities in public equities there - I know of 1 <$1b L/S fund, Cascade (Gates investment fund), and Russell Investments (which I think only does FoF?). It's not a very expansive set of opportunities. If I did want to move to Seattle, what career switches I could realistically make? My perception is that public equity investing is not a very transferrable skillset. Any way I could get into LMM PE?

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I'm on one of the coasts right now but hometown is Chicago & I've contemplated moving back so many times (maybe now, maybe in a few years). Completely get the struggle, at the end of the day home is home. I can live in random spots in the country, but despite having been in one city for close to 3yrs now I don't feel like it's really home. Maybe this changes over time, maybe it never does.

Good news for you though. You are graduating into a post Covid world, not a pre Covid world. A fair bit of LOs either a) are now hiring remotely or b) will let you work remotely if you've proven yourself. So you can either spend a few years here and then try for another AM with a remote position or get promoted to Analyst at your shop (probably a 5-6yr journey post graduation) & spend a few more years with top performance and winning trust -- after which you can negotiate with them to work remotely.

Perhaps this ends up being 75-85% work remotely, 15-25% in office (so 3-3.5 weeks a month in Seattle and remaining 0.5-1 week in NYC or whatever HQ city for your firm). You'll likely have to use your own dime for travel & lodging but happiness / contentment to be in a city that you love with people you care about (parents / friends) is easily worth that tradeoff. That said, Seattle to NYC would be pretty brutal, in this case I'd recommend looking for AMs in SF / LA so that if you do have to make that commute 1x a month or so it'll be much easier on you. But plenty of time for all that 

 

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