Desk Cost Bench Marking
Hey guys, something that is not often discussed here is how much desk costs pods get charged to run a desk. To be clear, a desk cost is a direct deduction on trading PnL and is supposed to account for things like rent, utilities, bloomberg terminal fees, exchange access fee, legal/compliance, quant support, software development, hedge fund founder's mistress etc. So to take an example. Suppose my desk cost is 1mm and I generate 10mm a year (trading PnL minus commissions paid to brokers, interest on capital used etc.). Then my total comp is (10mm-1mm)*payout percentage. I work at a pod (one of the usual suspects) and I just want to be sure i'm not getting screwed by desk costs that are abnormally high.
I'm running 200mm AUM and my desk cost is 1.7mm per year with 20% payout percentage. If I make 5% on AUM on a typical year and my payout is 20%, I get paid (10mm-1.7mm)*0.2 total comp. What are all your desk costs?
Bump. We need more threads like this one.
How much do you pay for research? Is it cost prohibitive for a firm like yours to buy equity or credit research from BB/EB?
big pods have funcitonally unlimited corporate and research acesss
My bad - I misread it and thought he was running his own money in a small SM and wanted to compare that to pods.
Unlimited does not mean free, by any means.
You need to ensure you know which costs are "above the line" and "below the line". Would be surprised if you have $0 costs that show up below the line..
Are you saying that a good chunk of the $1.7M is deducted from his 20% "gross profit" (20% of PnL after above the line costs), and not from "revenue" (total PnL)? I.e., below the line = more expensive, because not subsidized?
Answer to 2 is to obviously to reduce your payout
Del
Not to rain on the parade and all, but the fact that no one here can offer any numbers despite many claiming to be PM or Senior PM makes me think that a large majority of comments regarding bonus, payouts etc. are bullshit. I would think desk costs would be a major point of interest for the average PM, so the lack of solid replies is quite telling.
Not a PM, so low confidence, but based on what I've heard anecdotally, $1.7M could be a bit high for $200M ... I assume you don't have very many analyst base salaries to pay. And the data and rent should also become cheaper if there are fewer heads. Hm.
What are the most expensive components? 3P data, salaries, rent, ...?
I heard people complain that overhead cost can be higher at a place like Citadel, given they provide so much infra and tech.
Depends whether sellside research is included in the $1.7m or not. If it is, sounds directionally reasonable. Everything else shouldn't cost more than $500k.
500k sounds low, no? in data driven sectors.
pod bizdev (noise) makes up non-insignificant volume...
yep theres probably less than 5 of us who made 7 figures on the whole HF forum last year.
But that thread has everyone making 5+ bucks lol.
Directionally, I believe what you're alleging ... the industry is a big misinformation game.
$1.7M sounds high, although it depends on # of analysts on your team and if trading/financing costs are included.
Based on personal experience, replicating a pod’s BASIC infrastructure costs ~$500K/year per person.
I’m including: BBG terminal, 8-9 sell-side research subs, prime broker, outsourced back office/middle office/compliance, OMS/PMS, accountants, IT.
Obviously if you use channel checks/expert networks and are a heavy consumer of sell-side research, the bill can rise to $700K+ per person.
I’d assume that platforms don’t charge centralized expenses like back/middle office, compliance and accounting to PMs although I heard that some firms are tightening the belt.
To answer the question: ~$700k. Small to medium sized pod
Don't platforms get breaks on sell side research access? Also shouldn't soft dollars cover most of the SS access? Yea i know regulations changed but I was pretty sure you still generate some commissions (at least my sleepy LO generates soft dollars which we use to pay SS). Why does Pod #150 have to pay $50k/yr to each sell side they sub to?
Feel like if you are morgan stanley, you aren't splitting hairs on making the newest pod pay 50k or whatever, since the fees they are getting from a p72 platform through trading are probably enormous.
Actually come to think of it, I also don't know how trading execution and prime broker selection goes...
My understanding was when PMs place trades it gets routed to the central desk who guarantees execution and crosses internally if needed, before going out into the market. But if you work with a specific sell side desk and they want those fees, are you able to steer it to the sell side of your choice?
As I understand it, you can't steer specific trades towards specific desks but rather influence the general flow to certain providers through broker votes. Ex. MS analysts/sales people published good research, were responsive, took me to a spa etc. I give them more votes than JPM at EoY. If all the other voters at my MM also allocated more votes to MS than JPM, MS will receive more flow than JPM.
That's what I've seen. PM ranks the brokers $ - $$$$ and then they get paid a share proportional to their ranking.
there's tiers of research/service you can get, and if you overconsume you get charged with the overage.
For the record, I don't subscribe to sellside research and "desk cost" does not include trading expenses like brokerage, commissions etc. It would seem based on the comments that I really am getting quite a bad deal
This sounds like verition lol
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