rates vs commodities for macro PMs?
I've worked in both rates and commodities and thinking how different type of training grounds breed macro (or RV) PMs.
Rates: expectations on Growth, inflation, demand for ALM/collateral/financing. more mainstream and easier to fit through the PM pipeline of rates/fx traders. But recent years of low yields/vol when QE is suppressing everything has made this area difficult (ex-2020). Perhaps hiking rates/tapering would be bullish for this area (I doubt it, but feel free to chime in here)?
Commodities: super cyclical. Focused on politics, weather (seasonality component), and global S/D. May have considerable expertise on inflation here, but mostly microstructure of those markets. Given the situation in Europe rn, an energy PM might be more valuable than a rates PM. However, I've seen commodities be much harder than I expected.
Wondering how macro folks juggle between commodities driven lens vs pure macro-economical lens. Would a macro fund go for weather driven alphas for example?
Also curious to hear if (sell side) trading or structuring would be a be better option to eventually exit to a PM role?
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