How to Research PMs and Position Yourself Early (Incoming HF Analyst)
Hi all,
I'm joining a multi-manager HF as a grad this year. From speaking to people in the industry, it seems clear that the PM you work for heavily determines your early experience and trajectory — quality of mentorship, seat stability, exposure, culture, comp, etc.
The challenge is, it's hard to find concrete information beforehand. Everything feels pretty opaque beyond broad reputational stuff ("this pod is known to be good" or "this one has turnover issues"), and by the time you're placed, it feels a bit late to influence anything.
I'm wondering:
- How do people go about researching which PMs are good — beyond just relying on random reputation? (Especially when you're new and not super plugged in yet.)
- Once you have a sense of who you'd ideally want to work for, how do you actually position yourself to land with that PM? (Before teams are assigned or to switch early if possible.) Any tactical advice would be appreciated.
Trying to think about this proactively. Would love to hear from anyone who’s gone through it.
Thanks in advance.
Picking Pods / PMs is even harder than trading stocks / bonds / FX. The least inaccurate metric is their track record (and in pod shops, basically how long they have stayed in the industry). Being in the industry for a while I can only say that fortunes come and go very quickly - it is still not very rare rare to see PMs that do well for 10 years in a row has a massive blow-up in year 11, and vice versa.
I agree with the comment above. If they have stayed for a long time at the same fund, even better. Bonus points if that fund is Millennium.
Every PM makes it sound like their investment process is sophisticated and the best in the world. Sometimes the more simplistic processes produce results. Don't focus on what their investment process is.
You are about to learn that you are no longer operating in an academic, clear cut world anymore. Get ready to live under constant uncertainty. You don't get graded work back to let you know if you did something wrong and where in the textbook you can go to get the right answer. You don't know if the dataset contains the answer you're looking for in it. You don't know how your pod will perform next year. You don't know what pod you will end up in. You don't know if your boss will be happy with your work tomorrow. You don't know anything.
Treat it like a stock, what do you do when you don’t have enough info? Get directional indicators. Do your own channel checks, talk to other PMs, call a family friend that runs risk at the fund, hire Yugoslavian hackers to tap into their PnL tracking systems, or blackmail their internal auditors to get the latest track record.
Jk - Like everyone mentioned, you’re walking into a risk-on career track. If you want consistent stock market returns with little risk and sustainable edge, get elected to Congress.
Speak to other analysts working for the PM. And ask the PM for his track record.
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