From what I've read is that though the comp for quant is quite good from Day 1, they aren't generally promoted to PM. Is it true?
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This doesn't make sense. There are centralized quant teams at big multi managers in which case you will never be a PM from that seat as you just work on centralized infrastructure that is used by PMs and don't take risk. However, there are lots of pods with quant strategies in which case the PM is likely a quant and quants familiar with those strategies can be PMs somewhere else. And lots of quant firms just don't have this notion of PM (HRT, radix, all non pod shops..)
Going to speak here as a more Macro/FI oriented guy (my tag is wrong) - there's a whole spectrum of quants on the buy side just like on the sell side.
A pretty large chunk of quants in Macro/FI are on teams where the PM comes from a traditional (normally pre Volcker) sell side macro desk. These PMs generally aren't technical, and the quant is their "tech support". They'll build dashboards, maybe some vol surface thing, etc. but for the most part your job is to fuck off and let the PM trade. Now a lot of PMs will lure a quant in to take the job by saying that there will be opportunities to learn about markets, trading, portfolio construction, etc. from them. Generally they have no incentive to teach you. The more you learn, the more you can ask for and the greater flight risk you become. The incentives are just not aligned in this case. Having said that, there are nice PMs in the industry who will teach you these things and you may actually be able to leverage yourself a sleeve and be on the way to becoming a PM, but be very careful about falling prey to PMs who promise a lot. There really is nothing binding them to things they say.
On the other end you have quants in systematic teams. If you are a quant involved in alpha research and have exposure to other investment processes like portfolio construction and risk management, then you will 100% have a shot at a PM seat at some point, provided you are good. These seats are rarer and this universe is smaller, but it's definitely a great place to be as a quant especially if you have a PM or other quants with good track records.
So are there any traditional traders in the team or is it just the PM and his quants?
If discretionary macro PMs have usually come from pre Volcker sell side desks (and their quants aren’t on the road to becoming macro PMs), do you think future macro PMs will still come from sell side desks of today, or somewhere else?
Taking a educated guess but sell side won't create the same type of risk-taking prop traders that existed pre-2008 because of the Volcker rule.
With hedge fund regulations increasing, I would assume the larger funds would likely convert into family offices with less regulations to take on these big risk strategies. I don't know how someone junior looking to break in will ever be able to break into this risk-taking strategy every again, although with the increased uncertainty in the world looking to be present for the foreseeable it may not be outside the realm of possibility.
My sense is the industry will try and adapt to this. The problem with more discretionary Macro pods in general is they tend to be quite small (normally 1-3 PMs just trading on their own) and they don't really need/want juniors hovering around them trying to learn their process.
One trend I've seen is that some macro firms are hiring new grads and trying to do training in house. Generally these are the bigger ones (I know Citadel, Balyasny do take new grads within Macro). You have to be technical to get these roles though, because you're useless from a finance/macroecon perspective but can be useful if you can code whilst they teach you the other stuff.
Another trend I've seen is people getting hired out of S&T at very junior levels, like right when they're about to get their associate promotion. This is basically like new grad hiring, but I've seen a bit broader backgrounds hired through this route.
You gotta get lucky too, really not that many seats in this universe and everyone is really into macro right now after the last couple of years of volatility.
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