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June 30, 2026
9 Free Financial Modeling Lessons
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+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
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You get to prove the EMH wrong
False. Markets are efficient. Everything is priced into the market. Your opinion, rather the possibility of it, was priced into the market the second you were born. In fact, universal constant is efficient markets. The fourth dimension of the universe is market efficiency. The entire galaxy and beyond is one giant feed of information injecting straight into the motherfucking markets while your sorry ass tries to buy low and sell high.
The market knows all, the market sees all, the market loves all. The market saw you wanking your willy at work yesterday. Everytime you shoot a load the s&p moves down 5 bps.
I have worked in PE and am working in the public equity/credit domain. My $0.02 is that they both can be interesting and frustrating.
PE - you have more interaction with boards and mgmt teams. A career in PE allows you to build deeper relationships with these figures and you can have a real network of operators later in your career. I always thought that was a nice quality. The frustrating part is the hours are mostly still somewhat brutal and there is a lot traveling (i hate traveling for work) and honestly doing deals can get sort of monotonous after your first handful. I also don't find PE guys (absent those who work at megafunds) really understand capital structure as well as they should. They're too programmed to do the same 10 tasks they need to do to execute a platform deal, do a few add-ons (mgmt mostly does this), then exit to get their 20% levered return w/o adding much real value.
Public domain - You get to think much more dynamically and put on interesting trades, especially if you can go across the capital structure. However, people can be somewhat myopic, you're essentially using an issuer as a platform to take positions against other investors (some don't find this fulfilling) and I think most ppl who work in public equity don't appreciate the fact that there is still a high level of speculating that goes into decisions (some think they are smart when they are just lucky) as you are not in those board discussions and don't have a perfect view of what a company can do to basically screw your side of the trade. I also don't find the relationships that I've built (mostly other finance bros like myself) to be that rewarding.
Comes down to whether you're a performer or a deal maker. With public securities it's really the markets against your own brain and you have to step up to the plate to show the markets what you've got whereas PE is far more about relationships, process, deal making etc.. It's just a very different style of doing business.
The ability to hedge, availability of liquidity, and option of sizing/diversification. This is also why I believe the buy-and-hold forever approach is much inferior in public than private. You are essentially crippling yourself from all the benefits of public markets while also getting in to deals with a higher multiple.