Getting into institutional Investment Management
I am in my mid 30's. My background is in prop energy trading. My career came to an end a couple years ago and I ended up as a market analyst for a large corporation, doing strategy development, building models, etc. While I get paid well and there is no stress, the career is not for me for the long haul. It is not about the money. I would work for less to do more stimulating work.
Research, trading, and building trade strategies are pretty much in my blood (commodities, equities, fixed income, derivatives, fx). Unfortunately, I do not have a CFA or MBA, and walking into a front office research role is probably not going to happen given my age, lack of upper level education, and experience in a different field which probably adds little value minus my programming skills.
I would love to go work for a government pension investment management firm, for the variety of investments, career stability, and varied job opportunities.
My question is: Would you take a BO or MO role to get a foot in the door and work your way up (downside is you are attached to that company for the medium term); or pursue a couple levels of the CFA, and/or enroll in a MBA program in the next year and have the freedom to apply to as many firms as possible for a FO spot?
Thank you for any advice.
I work in institutional AM and can tell you that at least at my firm, our guys wouldn't hire someone from a BO role w/ no CFA or MBA, especially for a senior level role. At junior levels they'll bring someone in post MBA even if they have no prior experience in investing, but at higher levels (which is probably what you'd get pegged for with your experience) you need to have some type of investing experience that is transferable and a CFA is almost always required. Obviously exceptions to the rule and if you try hard enough you can do it, but I wouldn't settle for a BO role with an institutional investor and hope to make the switch.
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