For London, are there more opportunities in macro than in l/s equity?
Whether it's the London PMs at the large US platforms or the large UK-based platforms that seem to mostly be macro-focused (Bluecrest, Brevan Howard, Rokos, Capula), it seems like equity l/s PMs in London are in the minority while the majority are in relative value/systematic/macro/fixed income/index/derivatives/rates/volatility/commodities, etc.
Are these strategies able to scale as well as equity l/s?
And why does this forum mostly discuss equity l/s when I see more PMs in these other strategies?
Macro is very big in London. As a datapoint Citadel GFI London is much bigger than the one in New York. I have no idea if there are necessarily more macro opportunities than L/S since I never worked on the L/S side.
The strategies are much more scalable than equity. It’s more common than you think to have senior PMs with a very lean team (2-3ppl) running ~750mm-1b in pure absolute returns (not RV). Which is unheard of in the equity world I think.
This sub is dominated by L/S simply because of the demographic; most people here are students. And I’m not saying that as a flak, people are generally way more exposed to equities like NVDA than they are to UST5y. A corollary of that is the equities recruitment is more crowded than macro, since everyone and their mother is thinking about the IB to HF route.
Do you generally need a quantitative and/or S&T background to get into macro? Would the typical IB/PE background be totally the wrong fit for the job?
Generally yes.
But also keep in mind macro is still very competitive . Sure it’s a smaller pool than L/S but that pool is filled with people who live and breathe macro
What kind of analysis do people in these strategies generally do? Is it also Excel-based but calculating more probabilities than EPS figures?
Can the work involved be taught on the job to anyone just like how a college grad could technically get a job at a l/s equity fund and learn the ropes?
Macro is way more “scattered” than L/S equity. For L/S juniors can go through a generic training program to learn about DCF EPS whatever, and then go to their respective pods and specialise within their industries etc.
For macro there is no “generic training program”. A junior working in XCCY basis pod has little to no overlap with a junior working in inflation bonds pod.. So it’s very hard to answer your question about what analysis they do since it’s so product/strategy dependent.
A corollary of that is although it’s possible to learn things on the job, unless you can get in through the grad programme, you would have very little chance of breaking in without the relevant experience.
Thanks that's helpful. It is surprising how there are so many macro HF roles that hire folks from S&T. But this path is rarely mentioned on WSO and S&T is always viewed as an "execution" job with limited exit ops
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