So many people hear praise the buyside like it’s the second coming of Jesus Christ. I don’t get it. The pressure of dealing with huge money from rich, annoying clients that don’t care about anything but performance, dealing with markets that you have no control over. It sounds like the hours improve a bit but the pressure grows tremendously. The churn of analysts, it would just give me so much anxiety.
Maybe it is the pay… but is the pay really that much different versus higher levels on sell-side, or even moving elsewhere with the great experience you have..? I get that sell-side can grind people to the bone, suck out their soul. But the pressure that comes with the buyside…
For people here, in whichever field, that have this high aim for the buyside at any cost… why?
I’ve yet to see a coffee station get taken away on the buy side.
1) It's an outcomes business rather than an input business. Have also heard this described as "ideas business rather than sales business". Success on the sell side is heavily influenced by the sheer amount of hours you are willing to put into writing / publishing / cold calling. Success on the buy side is far more influenced by how good your process is for picking stocks / bonds / insert asset class here. Yes there is stress - especially when things move against you - but for most people I know who have made the move (and can get the hang of 'thinking like an investor') quality of life is vastly better than on the sell side.
2) Depending on where you end up you may end up with zero client marketing required. E.g. if you end up at a large pension fund / sovereign wealth fund / multi-strat HF you can (mainly) just get on with the job of investing. On the sell-side there's an enormous amount of 'sales' required - cold calling / organising corporate access / marketing trips. Some places on the buy side you will have to do some client marketing but probably not much as an analyst - more when you are a PM trying to raise new funds - but there are a lot of places where there's close to zero required. Buy side can be a much better place to work for introverted types (the trade off here is buy side can sometimes be a lonely place).
3) Linked to both of the above: picking stocks / researching companies / investing is fun. I get to spend 100% of my time doing this. On the sell side it was 50%.
4) Pay is similar / worse at the junior level and a lot better at the senior level. Also typically a lot more transparent / performance linked.
The fact you used "hear" and not "here" in the first sentence shows why you are not buyside material