Are there any distinct disadvantages of taking a hedge fund graduate programme offer versus a traditional IB offer? Both offers would be for the London office.
Becoming a skilled investor is the goal in the long term but I am curious if anyone thinks I would be missing out on anything of value by not working in IB first?
| +56 | Is a 3.6 good enough | 38 | 5h | |
| +25 | What are my options? | 13 | 3d | |
| +20 | Dream Job vs Dream Location | 15 | 2d | |
| +18 | Recently Moved, Not Enjoying it and Wondering How Long to Stay | 2 | 1d | |
| +18 | Didnt Convert Twice - Screwed? | 1 | 17h | |
| +16 | Non-finance post-PE exits | 8 | 6d | |
| +16 | hf recruiting - headhunter or cold outreach? | 4 | 2d | |
| +15 | Value of a math minor? | 5 | 16h | |
| +15 | GPA Non-Target | 6 | 2d | |
| +15 | Struggling to Network for Full-Time IB Recruiting | 6 | 1d |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
Hedge funds are all extremely different from one another, to the point of being wholly separate careers.
For example, I do concentrated long-short. Less than 5 new positions per year. So I'm spending my days deeply researching the operations of a given company; the company I'm researching today, I've been learning about for 2 months straight. Other than keeping up-to-date on my few other positions, I've done nothing for 2 months but learn about this new company and how its positioned against customers, suppliers, and competitors.
Compare that to someone at another hedge fund who is doing quant work and tweaking his code to change his automated trading strategy to respond differently to volume spikes.
Completely different jobs with almost nothing in common. Nothing about my job qualifies me for his job, and nothing about his job qualifies him for my job. But we are both hedge fund guys.
On the other hand, IB is IB. Yes there are differences between the firms, but if you've done IB then everyone who values an IB background will see you as someone who has that background.
So when you say IB vs HF, you're giving us half the info. We need to know what kind of hedge fund, and whether its a place where you can learn the skills needed to build a sustainable career. To generalize, the more fundamental the shop the more you're going to need a traditional valuation skill set that is most commonly learned in IB.