What resources to push/ask PM for?
Hi guys,
Hope everyone's having a good weekend!
I'm gonna be joining a $120M long biased HF FT soon. The PM is very smart, Stanford alum and worked and some well renowned funds before starting this as a family office 15 years ago (only starting accepting outside capital end of 2024). We focus on small/micro cap stocks so he's not big on data/resources yet. He did say we could get some more if I felt so (not sure if he meant it, obv). The fee structure is 2/20, for context.
Right now, we have Alpha Sense. What resources should I push for him to get:
- Claude enterprise (I studied CS at a top college, so I have a decent enough background to get it running)
- Bloomberg/Factset
- Sell side research (He's not big on it, but I usually read them heavily for sector reports/initiations)
- Secotr-specific 3P data (far-fetched since we probably cannot get 'all of it' and I don't know enough to know which would be most useful)
Would really appreciate any insights/thoughts and whether or not I should wait a few months after starting to actually put this across to him. Thanks a lot in advance for the help!
For $120M of AUM, your budget is going to be tight. If you can get Claude enterprise + Bloomberg that's half the battle. I doubt you'll be able to afford alt data that creates meaningful alpha with your budget.
Doubt you're going to get much sellside access but you could sign up for an etrade account to get MS for free (can't look back in history though).
StreetAccount. AlphaSense and Bloomberg are the basics.
But at that size you’re not going to get much. Brokers will want at least around $30k-$80k for minimal access / read only. Pay hundreds of thousands for better access. You’re going to want to pay the firms that cover small cap names.
Pay millions for top tier service.
Alt data is tough if you’re covering a lot of names when you may use it sometimes or you may not. Then it becomes a waste of money.
Hire an unpaid intern from a top college/b-school use his access to LSEG for sellside as well as Bloomberg online. Not the ideal thing to do but a lot of small funds do this...
Yeah, I've been using my own LSEG access from college for a while. Debating just requesting them to let it continue for another 12 months since you only get access by request, so it's not a blanket deactivation process post graduation
Who is your broker? If it is a reputable bank, you can get access to their sell-side research platforms for free.
Otherwise Bloomberg, Alphasense (Tegus), and Claude are my most used tools. If I could only have 2 out of those 3, I would take Alphasense and Claude over Bloomberg. Bloomberg makes life easy but it isn't necessary.
$120mm fund? I'd ask for a good reference
I didn't understand the comment here. Was it a joke implying that I should leave ASAP or was it serious advice to find good references for the PM himself?
the latter
Bloomberg by far. Lets you IB/chat with people you meet and building that network helps de risk your career
Id assume he’d know what is needed for his fund to run. Bloomberg is always handy, even if you only have one. Given your CS background I’d at minimum ask for some form of corporate AI, you have the potential to develop a ton if you implement it properly without needing it to do all the work for you. The best result you can give him is maximized return for your pay.
You should not push your PM to get resources. He already knows what resources he needs and he already had an idea in mind for what he wants you to do. I'm sure you are a smart guy, but no PM thinks that you have genuinely useful skills. I'm sorry to tell you that, but I just want you to understand his or her perspective. If you go to a top school or maybe have something unique special, sometimes a PM may indulge your ego while thinking in their head "this kid is annoying tbh".
An alternative attitude you can have is to ask your PM how you can be more resourceful. If you're asked to do something ask "What do you think is the fastest way to do X in your experience?" Full stop on the question there. Fully hear the other person's ideas before injecting your own. After you hear them in full then say "I had heard someone mention Claude enterprise being potentially useful for this part of the problem. Have you used it before?" Most likely he will (correctly) say that is a terrible idea (not sure if OP is a bot from Anthropic, since no real investment professional even if they are an intern thinks Claude is non-retarded at this job). If he says that (because it is the right answer), you should probably accept that and move on -- you probably do not know better than this person that is older than you (if you are in a top CS program, you should understand that Claude cannot be good at finance since most of what a finance professional does is out of the training distribution, since Anthropic cannot steal data from finance companies but can steal the world's books, movies, academic papers, websites etc. This is why it can solve an Erdos problem and do all your homework, but is absolutely retarded at finance).
I say this btw not to be dismissive of you, but because I was this kid 10 years ago. It's an understandable feeling to have, but you need to let go of it.
Hey,
Thank you for the detailed response and candor. You're right, in that I don't know right now how claude would add alpha. I have set it up to increase productivity though (e.g. mgmt guidance v/s actuals track record, writing code for data clean up and analysis: which I did for the case study for this job and the PM was impressed, etc.) I fully agree that I know nothing yet, but in all honesty, I feel like if I don't take enough agency, I'll be stuck at a dead end fund. I may be wrong, but my return from a top fund got rescinded because of visa stuff, and I really want to be able to do my best work, with the right infrastructure, which seems like it won't happen without taking initiative. Doesn' citadel invest a ton in infra? Do you feel like it's just bells and whistles but real ability can do well even without them?
extremely bad take and top teams using claude across many diff types of workflows
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