Is it worth staying in the HF industry in Los Angeles?

I recently left a L/S equity seat in NYC and moved to Los Angeles for personal reasons. I plan to stay here.

There seem to be very few equities seats in LA. There are a couple credit seats but not too many. And then there are occasional remote HF seats at small funds. 

My concern is that should I find a unicorn seat that keeps me in LA, I’ve only become further entrenched in career that isn’t really marketable where I live. And should I leave that job in the future, I may find myself even older, with a mortgage and kids, and not too employable here.


I’m not interested in PE. Late 20s. Would you recommend trying my luck at another HF or pivoting now to something like law or real estate? Perhaps the remote HF world is more liquid than I thought? Thanks.

6 Comments
 

There are pods pretty much everywhere particuarly MLP which is very flexible location wise. 

Sorry its not too clear here did you leave your job with nothing lined up and now are have to find something in LA? You may have to be flexible on career options if thats the case, there are some opportunities but not many. Could also try interviewing with SF based funds with the promise of spending x # of weeks in Office. 

 

Echoing above. There are tons of real money LOs and a lot of credit HFs. Also a decent amount of pods in LA as they can be set up anywhere (personally know one starting in Redondo Beach, out of all places). There's definitely some smaller equity HFs here. Obviously not as much platforms as in NY but I personally don't find the LA finance scene that much smaller than SF. But that might just be me.  

 

Thank you, all, for the feedback. My old group shut down so I didn’t really choose to leave the old job. 

From what I can tell, LA seems like credit, a few LO, and a few pods.

 

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