Is stock picking a dying skill?

Hey everyone,

As I'm contemplating the next step in my career, I considering if I should take the public equities path as I'm interested in analysing companies and hate all the process-related admin that I did in IB.

However, I'm a little concerned that stock picking is a skill that will be phased out in the future. My impression is that markets are more efficient that ever as information and AI becomes available to everyone and most fund managers don't net a good return after comparing against benchmark and deducting fees.

For folks who currently work on the public equities side of things, why did you pick this path and what are your observations?

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It’s intellectually stimulating, money is good for hours worked (though to be good you have to spend a lot of “non work” hours thinking about the job), and highly autonomous in terms of how I spend my days. I enjoy the work and get paid to learn new things all the time.

At a certain point when deciding my path I accepted that this industry is a secular decliner but that I was willing to take the risk to do something I enjoyed. In 10 years I should have enough money to live relatively comfortably and/or go do something different if the shit hits the fan. I’m lucky to be at a scaled fund with decent economics that isn’t really feeling a ton of outflow pressure currently but at the same time it’s not like inflows are flowing in rapidly either. So who knows what will happen. But at a certain point you have to make that personal choice about whether or not the benefits and good stuff that comes with being in AM/HF land is worth the career risk of blowing out personally or your fund not surviving. YMMV.

family is everything
 

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