Equity Research analyst pay formula

I heard that many equity funds compensate analysts with a formula to gauge their contribution to fund performance. My questions:

  1. How is the formula structured? By attribution or something else? Any numerical examples?

  2. Does the size of the sector you cover matter? Say you cover a sector that is 3% of your benchmark, how does that affect you vs. a 10% sector?

  3. Is their a clear boundary for coverage? What if you spot a great opportunity but it’s in a sector out of your circle? You could not buy it yourself both it’s on restricted list and your personal money does not have that scale, also risk tolerance

  4. Say you covered energy in 2014, what happened to you on the way down? Would you be doing fine since your recommendations did better than energy index? What if your PM eliminated energy for the whole year of 2015? You had zero bonus that year?

  5. For a long only fund, if the core positions will be held over several years, does the analyst who initiated the buy constantly rewarded for that stock? If the weight is high, is that like take an effortless ride?

  6. Long only fund...... wouldn’t you recommend to buy most of the names? That is the only way you get bonus?

Many thanks!

5 Comments
 

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Maybe one of our professional members will share their wisdom: @k089786" Leon-Hunter-Rowe @BudFox2"

I hope those threads give you a bit more insight.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

My fund is long only equities and we do things pretty simplistically, but the bulk of the bonus is based on total strategy results. For the individual piece, it’s kind of an excercise in judgement using attribution.

We have to stay fully invested, so recommendations are really what we think will outperform... even if the market tanks, we get paid as long as we tank less.

Part of the reason we focus more on strategy returns is BECAUSE PM’s can do what they want and ignore you.

 

Thanks for your reply.

I understand as long as you outperform your benchmark your fund is fine. But what makes bonuses different among analysts? Arbitrary by PM or senior management?

 

My firm bases it heavily on total fund performance, so we would all receive similar bonuses (as a % of base, of course). Senior management has the ability to increase or decrease the % slightly based on individual stock/sector performance, but it’s kind of a guess. Other firms have much better specific stock selection tracking, which probably factors into it more.

 

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