Help me transition from AM to HF

DE

Research Analyst in AM - Equities

Hello monkeys,

I'm a research analyst at a decently sized LO AM (€150bn+) situated in continental Europe. I work in a team of three (two PMs and myself) managing close to €2bn in equities and will gradually start taking on more of a PM role over the next 1-2 years. I'm 28 and have 3-4 YOE, all on the buyside.While I genuinely enjoy a lot of what I do (love the markets, the constant learning, and the intellectual freedom), after going to a few conferences and brushing shoulders /speaking with peers on the HF side (mostly SM and MM L/S), I've come to strongly believe that this style of investing and approach would better suit my personality. Unfortunately, I have found the 'sleepy' stereotype of people working on the AM side to be quite truthful, whereas almost all the HF people I have met appear much more passionate (even obsessed) about the markets and their work. This, along with the stronger emphasis on absolute performance and 'eat what you kill' mentality, resonate a lot more with me.

My question is how would you suggest trying to make this move? I see a few potential options, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive:

A. Get an MBA (US or London Business School or Insead) and try recruiting from there;
B. Try to network at conferences and other investor events and try to get interviews or referrals from contacts that I make;
C. Try as a first step to move to a larger financial hub (most likely London), either to an AM or ER or a smaller SM HF and then try recruiting again from there;
D. Dig my heels in here, transition to PM role, and try recruiting from a relatively stronger bargaining position (PM track record, experience with risk taking, etc.);
E. Endlessly blast off applications to postings on LinkedIn, efinancialcareers, bloomberg terminal job postings, and headhunters and go for the numbers game;
F. Something else...?

I would greatly appreciate anyone's thoughts, suggestions or advice.

Thanks!

If you like the passion for markets in the HF people, have you considered going out on your own in the HF space. Like trying to build a track record and then starting out a fund with investments from your current contacts in the space, considering you are pretty high up at your current fund(PM level). 

We have helped quite a few people start their own funds after were done working under at a MM. Some did quite good, a few others not so much, also the one's that didn't do quite well, were mostly under-capitalized to start a fund anyways. For a PM their job revolves around getting more investor commitments as much as it does around managing their portfolio.