Hedge Fund Manger IQ?
I'm a student (semi-target for IB + slightly retarded) and read that hedge fund managers are often significantly wealthier than their IB senior counterparts. Now it's pretty obvious that in order to be a successful HF manager you'd probably have to be more intelligent than the average american, but to what extent? I see human potential as a function of intelligence and hard work, and assuming that hard work is "maxxed out", to what extent is intelligence important in this function in regards to HF management?
I understand that IQ is a flawed measurement it still probably is good as a rough indicator. For reference, my IQ dropped ~1/2 a standard deviation from when I first took my test at 13 vs now a college freshman (131 --> 125)
No one knows and no one cares. I’ve never heard anyone in the professional world talk about their IQ or take an IQ test. Obviously intelligence is important but you aren’t going to find a statistical answer that isn’t complete BS saying on average x increase in IQ leads to +y% of working at a hedge fund or being a PM. But does being smarter help you, yes. But I’d rather take someone with a 110 iq and wants to learn and is hungry vs someone with a 130 iq who is lazy and doesn’t care and can’t coherently explain their thesis in 5 mins.
In fairness to OP, they’re not saying you don’t have to work hard. They’re saying almost everyone in HF will work as hard as they can, making intelligence more relevant as something non-controllable.
Plus, even if no one talks about or explicitly tests IQ it doesn’t mean you can’t find good proxies. Many of the HFs will do cognitive screening tests prior to recruitment, and get pretty good data on the percentile scores of successful candidates. You could convert that to a rough IQ estimate fairly easily. The problem is more that this isn’t very applicable beyond the junior levels and that HR would be very reluctant to disclose anything like this.
I had to take a Wonderlic test when I applied for a Point72 internship 5 years ago.
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
yeah but when talent works hard then you’re fked
Rule #1: Be Talented
Rule #2: Work Hard
Rule #3: Don't be untalented
IQ is a measure of "intelligence". Money is a measure of financial "success". "Success" is defined differently by each individual. It is definitely a function of hard work but also a myriad of other variables you do not control (such as time, place etc....) Hence financial success, is very much a function of "luck" too. Yes, all (or the vast majority) of financially successful people have worked hard in their lives......but not all intelligent and hard working people are financially successful. There's a great book my Michael Mauboussin (The Success Equation) which talks a lot about success and luck. I've been in markets for over 30yrs - I can attest that luck plays a much bigger role than we give it credit for.
If you've ever worked with a PM you'll quickly discover the average is likely to be 2 figures tops
many such cases
While IQ is important for pattern recognition, there is a point at which you have marginal diminishing returns. I believe, in trading, what is equally if not of more importance is actually RQ (Rationality Quotient). You can have an amazingly high IQ, but if you have low RQ then you will never get past your Type 1 thinking, emotionally driven, heavily biased, little reflection, which all leads to suboptimal and potentially unprofitable decision making. This RQ would matter significantly more in discretionary trading, whereas for systematic, the computer can remove many of these issues but then it depends on who's building the models and interpreting the outputs.
Also, looking at the change in your IQ score from when you are 13 to freshman, is literally just noise. It's only 2 data points, and the IQ test is an approximation with a reasonable variance..
I mostly agree, but I’d frame it differently.
Contrarian take: Emotions are actually additive if you channel them right. Soros famously used back pain as a signal to cut trades; I think mental or emotional "pain" is a legit bellwether for when a position is broken.
Also, creativity and common sense matter as much as raw IQ. I use this interview question to screen for it:
The "smart" candidate just does the math and picks 1. The effective candidate asks who else is in the room. - what % of people will iterate to 1 (or a different number). This is Keynes’ beauty contest in a nutshell.
Probably 125, eg maybe top 1/3 of someone who did investment banking but nothing crazy. They don’t make more from having high IQ.
Diminishing returns past 125 imo
Feel like its a lumpy curve, i.e. 120-140 broadly similar returns, but hitting 140+ you start seeing materially higher probability of being great.
140 and i suck at this job
Imposter syndrome? If not how do you think you can do better? Or if you feel like you hit a ceiling what do you think that ceiling is?
Genuinely very interesting question that I've considered before too.
Really wonder if someone very experienced can give us chumps their view on the key traits of successful senior PMs that have weathered out numerous cycles. Just off the top of my head, I'd be curious what people think about the weighting between IQ, EQ (for network / SS connections), rationality, risk-lovingness/risk-aversion (big balls index so to speak), work ethic (worked hours), intellectual curiosity, as predictors for continued outperformance.
I’ll ignore your fixation on IQ, since you’re essentially a kid.
In practice, to answer your question, most HF managers I’ve met are typically have savant-like minds. I.e. almost every one of them is on the spectrum.
What differentiates them for everyone else is 3 things, maybe 4:
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