HF Regrets?

I'll provide the perspective of someone who went to a HF directly from a banking program, but whose peers / friends largely went to PE what feels like a lifetime ago.

I went into a strategy that doesn't really exist in PE (i.e. not long-term, concentrated public market investing) and I love the game. I believe the work is more interesting than PE / banking - I get to look at a broader range of opportunities in a framework other than just LBOs and I spend little time on process work. I have a lot of autonomy - I decide for the most part the diligence process, I decide if I need to build models, I run management meetings, I travel whenever wherever I want, etc. At a certain point you have a flow and everything just clicks - you have an efficient process, you can put on trades, you can literally watch the money pile up.

The flip side is, it's still a job. There are shitty things you still have to do, like scrubbing comps or manually pulling data. You can never really unplug (don't think there's been a day in years, including international vacations in opposite timezones, where I haven't checked on the market / news at least before the open even if it's at midnight on New Years and I'm at some club in Bangkok). There are days when the book loses money, your PM busts your balls. The stretches of losing money creep into other aspects of your life, not just an overhang on the feel of the floor where you can feel everyone's just uptight, tense, stressed. There have been a couple of big loss days where I literally felt physically sick. For better or worse, you get marked every day, and one or a few bad marks and you're out. This is a different type of stress than PE right? This leads me to my point - this just isn't a stable, predictable career (it's not a good LBO candidate haha). People go into this business for the tail outcomes that you might not get in PE, but in PE, I've watched my friends get jammed on dumb shit but many of them now make around what I make but more consistently, have been able to put down roots / settle because they know they just need to keep doing what they are doing and their pay steadily rises, carry vests, etc. Some of them even enjoy the process bs. Their stress isn't existential and they can plan their lives.

This business isn't for everyone. Don't go into it for just the money, you need to actually love it to be successful long-term. It's sexier, edgier, but it's a lot riskier, and sometimes it's not clear the extra risk is worth it from a mental health perspective. Don't get me wrong - there are days where you mint a lot of dough and you are on top of the world, but then the market closes and opens again. For me, I'm too deep. This is the only life I've really ever known. It's like those prisoners that get out and they don't know what to do in the real world so they commit a crime to go back. I love the game and hope I can survive long enough to make enough money to live off my own trading, because I don't think there's anything else in the world I'd rather do.