Reading past threads on this forum, I have seen a wide array of answers to this question ranging from "it's impossible to have a life" to "8-6". Would be helpful to also hear earnings season vs. rest of year, SM vs. MM, and your level of seniority.
Context: 1st year at non-traditional fund trying to understand what is most common.
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Typically I work 6 days a week 12 hours a day. I work the most at my fund. I don’t see anyone else working more than 8-6 5 days a week. It’s PM dependent.
That’s very helpful. What is your PM having you do that results in you working a lot more?
Going to be vague. Continuing project work and ad-hoc tasks. Generally it is just a way to get more hours out of me. Part of it is due to inherent engineered dysfunction of the team.
11-12hr x 5 days, though not always contiguous + random weekend hours
It completely depends on PM but... there is a tremendous amount of performative presenteeism / perception is reality BS
I really don't think this is a job you log off 5pm.. 8pm... whatever on Friday, and go dark til you log on 7am Monday, ever..
Just remember Monday morning "how was your weekend" might be bait, and consider some indirection
Logging off at 8pm on a Friday is wild to me.
Guess it’s dependent on team but most people in my firm are gone by 5pm Friday..
Also no weekend work expectation so I don’t log on ever until Monday morning. Having time to be off and recover is important in such a stressful/brutal environment
Generally this kind of toxic behavior is typical among PMs that are simply mediocre. Several superstars also behave this way, but the distribution is heavily concentrated among the former, and if you worked for a superstar you wouldn't care because you would be making a lot of money.
8:30am-6:00pm at a non-pod multistrat
PM gives me complete autonomy over my part of the book. I do what I want, when I want. And we were up +15% last year.
Pretty nice relative to my previous fund (well known SM) where I was in office 8:00-7:00, on call until midnight+, and expected to work on Sundays
I work in B4 Private Equity Tax. Like 20-30 in the summer and busy season 60-80. Winter is awful but I think it’s worth practically having the full summer work free with 40+ days of PTO.
W troll honestly
4 hours a day, 5 days a week
Macro PM @ MM
interesting. Then where, in very general terms, do you see your edge? I would assume most Macro PMs work much longer hours, so they'd have more time to analyse and digest information. Do you have a very systematic process, which saves you time?
he's probably trading euro STIRS into the euro close...
My trade horizons are not intraday and I don't trade very often relative to other PMs. The broader macro picture barely changes on a week to week basis so watching the market tick is just watching noise. If anything, it's worse for me because I will lose sight of the bigger picture.
I plan in advance what risk events can impact my macro view and that of the broader market narrative and usually just spend time at the desk for those events. Those are the only times that I would likely be trading whether its to put on a trade, take profit or stop out.
My performance with this approach is magnitudes better than when I watched the markets for 10-12 hours a day so I guess you could say my edge is that I'm better at filtering the noise.
do u trade mainly directional macro or RV?
have heard that the former tends to have longer hours than the latter but ig it might just depend on ur trading frequency
7:00 - 18:00/19:30 Mon - Fri
5-6 hours Sun
LO
I work 8:30-6 5 days a week but am generally reading relevant stuff in evenings and over the weekend. Probably do 10hrs or so of reading outside of my actual office hours.
This is the way it should be. Otherwise you’re just a monkey for your PM, and that isn’t really attractive for either person in that relationship.
MM macro pod - generally work 7am-7pm with very little weekend work. Setting those boundaries however is a constant fight
concentrated long only, I'm like 8-6pm most days with an hour in the gym in there 2-3 days a week. I usually catch up on news for 2-3 hours on Sundays. I occassionalaly log a full work day on a Sat or Sun either because I need to catch up due to too much going on or otherwise just to get a jump on the week but it's hardly ever mandator. So call it 45-50 hours on average stepping up to 50-60 during earnings.
How'd you get to your current seat? concentrated LO is where I want to end up, but seems like roles come up very infrequently and I'm assuming often don't go through recruiters
b school
SM and ppl grind. If it’s not earnings season: 7am - 10pm 4 days a week and stop at close on Friday. Earnings or not Sunday is a full work day. Excellent culture though with killers and you make of it what you want at the end of the day
Tiger cub or pod spin out? Duration has to be leaning on the ST side if you’re grinding this much. Just curious.
Not tiger cub, just concentrated and pretty much risk neutral so correct line of thinking
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