7 Comments
 

Quite hard to say because it’s very much team and product dependent. Over time most pods seems to move towards taking less “macro” risk in favour of low-vol RV type strategies. Most people who do “macro” would still have some RV tilt if you were to decompose their book. So the line is very much blurred. All I can say is try to go for products where you can generate alpha and have capacity. RV rates, systematic futures are ok. RV credit or equity vol arb can be tough. Quanty-ness depends mostly on the team’s approach, but everything else being equal I would say RV is slightly more quanty.

 
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Macro is a bit of catch-all that can mean different things to different people. As someone mentioned above, the lines can be very blurred. I would focus on the difference between directional vs. relative value risk-taking in macro products. My advice would be that it is generally easier to be in a directional macro seat and occasionally take advantage of relative value opportunities than it is to be in a relative value seat and take advantage of directional macro opportunities. The former is often a downshift in risk profile vs. the latter and this makes it more palatable to all involved - management, LPs, whatever... I think its similar to a discretionary macro person wanting to build out more systematic structure to better inform risk-taking vs. a systematic macro person wanting to veer into discretionary risk-taking where again the former is a lot easier to sell.

One last comment - the personality types / risk-taking experience are quite different between the two. I would chat with people a bit more about what they do to try to understand the differences and what might be better for you.

 

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