How to get monthly track record from current shop?
I have read a few posts talking about shwoing track record to recruiters, but none of them are 100% applicable to my case, so I decided to ask again (posting this anonymously for obvious reasons).
Very shortly: I am a senior analyst at a SM HF managing a sleeve of capital. Did a first round with a MM for a APM role. Now, for the second round, they are asking me for my monthly P&L.
My bonus is not formulaic and CIO is very shady when it comes to analysts' performance. I only receive 1 number a year, when bonus is discussed.
So my problem is I have my yearly P&L but I don't have my monthly P&L. Other senior analysts made the jump from this shop to MM PM roles, so I guess they did manage to somehow prove their monthly track record, sharpe etc. I could ask some of them but would prefer not to if possible.
Any ideas of how to do this? Thanks
So I love this topic. There was a recent article on business insider I believe about how one hedge fund BD team gets a pseudo track record from another hedge fund. Its very shady business practices, like spy vs spy. But essentially, your current hedge fund has no incentive to provide you your track record, especially since you can take that to outside firms.
Would you be able to share the article
The title is P&L: profits and liars
https://www.businessinsider.com/hedge-funds-push-legal-limits-vet-trader-performance-claims-pnl-2025-1
this I find so weird (and seems to only apply to L/S roles) that you are able to deploy risk and yet have no idea how the portfolio evolves on a monthly basis
in pretty much all other markets roles (macro/commodities/quant trading) every person who has a PnL attached to their name has full and unlimited access to how their portfolio and PnL looks like at any given time (I mean how else are you supposed to trade if you don't).
how does it acc work for you? like at the end of the year your boss just says you made or lost X? so you have no idea what is going on till then?
Yes, officially we only have one performance number a year, which is given to us on the bonus discussion.
During the year, we have an approximation in bbg, but position sizes are not always updated correctly / are not live. We can just see 1 day return, 1 week, 1 month. So we know more or less what our number is today, but not YTD, for example. And if a position is closed, it no longer appears on the screen. Of course, I can't store those numbers unless I take screenshots.
The argument my CIO uses is that he wants us to look at company fundamentals and not waste time checking obsessively the returns screen every minute.
How do you manage a sleeve in this case? Do you place your trades yourself? Do you have a list of trades that you send to your trading desk or your PM and they execute for you? If you have a list of trades that you "executed" theoretically, do you know what price your trades executed at?
If you have a list of trades that you "executed" and you know your transaction price, you can recreate the performance on a daily/monthly basis yourself. You can further verify your own back calculations with the annual P&L number that is in your company's portfolio management system.
But its really weird that you manage a sleeve but you don't even know what your current positions' quantity or even live P&L is.
You obviously should have jotted down your daily P&L at the end of each day. If you weren't doing it then, I hope you've learnt the lesson and are at least doing it now.
Many PMs make it opaque so that analysts don’t try to point to their attribution for comp purposes or for laterals, no fun as an analyst in that sort of role, but entirely commercial for the PM
I’ve worked at places with opaque attribution/PnL and others with full daily portfolio, open files on the drive and analyst tagged attribution
How firms approach this is a good signal for the general comp and true career progression potential
bro why you trying to complicate this? just do what everyone else does and make up ur number
Appreciate the advice, but it would be great if I could not just make up 72 months of performance (and make them match with my real annual performance)
Best bet is your ops team. Grab a drink with one of the guys and ask him to pass you the details. Give a reason, say you are interested in understanding slippage/transaction cost, etc.
Good idea. Probably he will gossip because he's not gonna buy the excuse but it is what it is. Thanks
by observation - in more systematic single managers, its common to have return, risk and basically all stats to manage vol & trades, altho you've less info on gmvs (or just pnl in dollar measures), given the flows, composites and the fact that company do not want to give out such details
definitely know of or expect such practices (that OP listed) from fundamental SMHFs
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