178 Comments
 

YoE: 2y

Quant

2023: 750k, a portion deferred

Notes: meh, could’ve been better
 

 

Analyst 2 in HF - Other:

YoE: 2y



Quant



2023: 750k, a portion deferred



Notes: meh, could’ve been better

 


how old are you? where’d you go to school? I’m a highschool student — would love advice on how to get into quant trading.

 

4 yrs out of school - London

Intersection between Quant/fundamental 

2023 -  125k + 1.8m

2022 - 125k + 2.75m

very happy, was expecting around 1.1m bonus but my bosses knew I had some pretty large offers to leave and turned them down so think he rewarded the loyalty. 

 

I mean they are understanding because its that common time when I have been running risk for a couple years now and done pretty well that I have basically moved into junior pm role. Then when places are offering to 6x your risk allocation you have to be pretty stupid to not hear them out. 

 

I went to uni a year early and UK Bsc degree only 3 years, so 24 years old (turning 25 in a couple months). I work on a super lean team in nat gas trading hence the ridiculous compensation over last couple years 

 
[Comment removed by mod team]
 

Better than being 0’d out… what’s your base? Also interested in comp progression as I’m also pretty junior

 
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My career thus far:

2017: school 25k

2018: analyst 0 years experience 250k

2019: analyst 1 years experience 200k if annualized. however, I did not earn all this money because our pod was fired mid year and i was unemployed for several months.

2020: analyst 2 years experience 350k

2021: analyst 3 years experience 525k

2022: Last year being a full time analyst. 775k all in comp. It was a good year though. normal comp for an analyst would be more like the previous year ~ 500k. at some point your comp as an analyst is just capped. If you become a career analyst for life, you can see your total comp rise to as high as $1M averaged across multiple years.

2023: I'm on a hybrid structure of analyst/PM so the firm decided to give me 50% of the discretionary bonus of an analyst. 400k discretionary bonus + base. 1.1M formulaic bonus with significant % deferred.

2024: I'm a full PM now. Expect to make ~2M all in comp with much higher allocation. however there's obviously a ton of variance around that #

I would say my outcome is in the 90th percentile of people I know from my graduating cohort. A more median comp trajectory for someone who joined the MMHF world is starting at 200k year 1 and getting paid an average of about 350k per year for the next 5 years. This is averaging over outcomes which include getting fired, getting zero bonus, normal years and amazing years.

People on this forum have the following misconceptions about HF comp

1. Someone's gonna pay you millions per year with no career risk to be a lifetime analyst. General rule: no risk no book no $.

2. PMs have it so much better. I'm getting paid about 3x as much this year compared to doing analyst work. I think it's fair when you consider that I could be canned for losing money, half my comp is deferred, and my income is basically a RNG. However, the lifestyle is certainly better. 

3. comp is a straight line function of years of experience. I've been canned. I've had 0 bonus years. You should expect this in your career as well.

 

Great post, you had a much better career than any of the quants I know. As you said, most places won't let you stay as an analyst long term but there is not always a path to pm/sub-pm either. I think it's harder to do in quant than fundamental or macro.

 

Remembering seeing a post a while back how all corporate careers are actually priced in accordance to risk/reward. Honestly I dont think its that far off. Couple poor decisions and some bad luck and not managing the associated stress correctly and boom career over at a hf. Also a large portion of luck involved in getting into a seat under a PM you really like that will teach you the right way. Similar to what was said above I remember when I first started managing risk I would wake up every night at 3am and not be able to go back to sleep till I had checked the news to make sure I wasn't about to lose a fuck ton of money from a black swan event, its rather stressful. PE is still the best risk adjusted return as far as finance jobs go as its outcomes are almost entirely derived from having over a certain level of intelligence and working really hard.

 

As someone that could have gone the quant route, I made this exact analysis and thus went the PE way. But I do have to say now I have a tinge of regret as knowing myself better I could have taken on a bit more career volatility. In my role (ASO1) I just don't see a way to a 7 figure year until 10 years post graduation (talking about actually receiving carry, not just vesting on paper), if I last that long.

 

I am at a medium-sized multi-strat.

Pay is somewhere between formulaic and discretionary: teams generally make a % of pnl but there is some range/discretion around that and the split seems to be more flat (PM doesn't take 80% of bonus pool).  I'm probably most akin to a jr PM the MM model (pay depends on the subset of investments I manage, and 2023 was my floor, but my typical % is in the mid single digits of pnl on my trades).

 

YoE (since Grad / on Buyside): 3.5 / 1.5

Strategy (SM / MM / Asset Class): MM rates

Total 2023 Comp (Base + Bonus): $100k + $100k

Total 2022 Comp (Base + Bonus): $100k + $50k

Notes / Performance: Ok but not great year. Up low-mid single digit %. Mildly disappointed with my share of the comp pool, but we didn't blow up and I didn't get fired.

 

benchmark might be SPX but your net might be lower than 100%

 

No, there are multi-strat SMs kinda an in-between of traditional SM and MM

 

Much better in almost every way. My personal belief is that the average PE seat is better than the average SM L/S seat, but the best SM L/S seats are better the best PE seats. I was at a very well respected group in MF PE and my colleagues were great, but at the end of the day, it’s a transaction-oriented job and I hated the grind / giving up your life until you get higher up the totem pole and even then, I didn’t like the idea of being on 6-8 boards, attending 6-8 board meetings per quarter and constantly traveling for management meetings / other portco events. If you actually think about it, it’s an insane amount of travel (6 board meetings / quarter + 3 random portco meetings / quarter + 5 management meetings / quarter + 5 sourcing meetings / quarter and average 2 travel days for each of these meetings). The above is more than 150 days of travel per year and that’s a pretty conservative estimate. Sure you can combine board meetings or dial in to some, but the point is that you are constantly on the road as a senior PE professional and that’s not something I wanted. You sacrifice a lot of things (e.g., family, pets, hobbies, health, etc.) and there are a lot of different ways to make money with having a little bit more control.

 

YoE (since Grad / on Buyside): 4/2

Strategy (SM / MM / Asset Class): MM 

Total 2023 Comp (Base + Bonus): $160 + $230

Total 2022 Comp (Base + Bonus): $140 + $180

Notes / Performance: Poor year, would expect $500+ in 2024

 

I like it, we're arent a traditional LO Credit, more special situationsy/shittier companies.  Hours are phenomenal compared to banking, regularly 40 hours a week and the work is interesting.  We usually get big enough where we can steer outcomes and such so its interesting work, definitely more opportunity to add alpha in this environment  

 

Out of curiosity what would you ballpark performance at? I think I'm in a similar seat as yours, just a year ahead in experience and I feel like in a LO seat the performance swings unless dramatic don't really move comp around much at the junior level.

For context my numbers below:

YoE (since Grad / on Buyside):  3.5/2.5

Strategy (SM / MM / Asset Class):  Credit LO

Total 2023 Comp (Base + Bonus): 310k, 170/140

Notes / Performance: Performance was roughly in line with HY/LL markets (so call it 12-14%) and had strong reviews

 

YoE (since Grad / on Buyside): 3.5 / 2

Strategy (SM / MM / Asset Class): SM - L/S

Total 2023 Comp (Base + Bonus): 335 / (135 + 200)

Total 2022 Comp (Base + Bonus): 275 / (125 + 150)

Notes / Performance: fund had a great year, personal contribution lagged peers

 

YoE (since Grad / on Buyside): >10 / 6

Strategy (SM / MM / Asset Class): Multi-manager L/S

Total 2023 Comp (Base + Bonus): ~$5mm

Total 2022 Comp (Base + Bonus): ~$3.5mm

Notes / Performance: Senior Analyst with a carve out and HSD payout. Putting up really good numbers obviously - this is not an average outcome. My advice to anyone in this business is (if you're good) get to a multi-strat ASAP and get a formulaic payout.

 

Great year, well done. Curious, someone that runs a large carve / capable of putting up $30-70m of pnl could get a great pm seat somewhere. And with your comp #s I’d assume you have quite a bit of deferred comp. Would you mind sharing (relatively) that guarantee #s you’ve been offered given someone in your situation (senior analyst with $5-10m of deferred comp I’m guessing)? I’d think most platforms would offer a 2x uplift?

 

Haven't bothered with PM processes yet.. been in my seat 3 years so have been focused on building the track record and scaling up. Imagine I could get a guarantee of a few years of my historic P&L run rate at a PM payout in addition to my deferred bought out. Trying not to think about it because I'm extremely happy where I am. 

 

YoE (since Grad / on Buyside): 3/2

Strategy (SM / MM / Asset Class): 650mm AUM L/S +15% on year

Total 2023 Comp (Base + Bonus): 365k (150 / 215)

Total 2022 Comp (Base + Bonus): 200k (100 / 100)

Notes: Honestly whelmed. We only have 4 IPs, so there’s plenty of bonus money to go around. I had significant contributions too IMO. I’m learning quite a bit so I’m probably staying for one more year, but I’m jumping if I get a good offer.

 

It’s not that I should be making more at this point, more so that this is seemingly the ceiling in pay at my particular shop. Due to the type of strategy that we run, this level of performance is considered a really good year. This bonus is my PM being “generous” in his view. Like you said, I’m doing well for someone with only 2 years of experience, but if this is the cap, I’d rather leave sooner than later. 

 

Yoe: 3/1

MM Consumer Tech Internet pod

2023: 175k / $230k good year I had a unique event that bought me some cred with PM and sr analyst.

2022: banking shit comp

This year is tracking really well so far, depending on dn fluctuations I’d say my PM will take a very risk adverse approach in some low vol spreads.. again dn is the most important factor

 

YOE: 2.5/1.5 (first full year at HF)

TMT Tiger Cub $1bn AUM

$100k base / $100k bonus

Performed better than SPX on both absolute and risk-adjusted basis (our net is like ~30%). 

 

With that experience you could prob make $300-600k total if you were at a top MM. Source: I'm same level of experience and other friends at my MM

So much for "tiger cub" and "prestigious S/M"

 

Not prestigious fund, just a smaller sized Tiger Cub. Chose SM cause they gave me offer and MM didn’t, no rocket science here. 

 

YoE - 3/1

Strategy - MM

Total 2023 Comp (Base + Bonus): 175 + 225

 

YoE - 3/2

Strategy - MM

Total 2023 Comp (Base + Bonus): $525k 

Total 2022 Comp (Base + Bonus): $200k (first year with the pod)

Notes: London office, P72/ Millennium/ Citadel

 

How did your comp jump up like that? Did you get a sleeve in your 2nd year?

 

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