Life as an investment professional:
Since event driven strategies tend to be characterized as being very thorough and very concentrated, I'm only working on 1-2 ideas at a time. Roughly speaking, in any given month, I'll drill down on 2-3 ideas, pitch 1-2, and 50-75% of pitched ideas are put on.
6:45am - Wake up 7:30am - In the office 7:30am to 8:30am - Breakfast, Check inbox/messages, Read paper/blogs/etc., morning meetings 8:30am to 1:30pm - Depending on the day, read transcripts/filings (30% of time), investment meetings/calls (20% of time), build models (40% of time), investment memos/emails (10% of time). This is a juggling act since I'm usually working on 1-2 new ideas and 2-3 portfolio positions during the week. 1:30pm - 2:30pm - Lunch/Pay Bills/ESPN 2:30pm - 8:30pm - Meet with PM (ranging from 30 minutes for brief updates to 3 hours for research findings) and more modeling/reading/conference calls rest of the day 8:30pm - Midnight - Go home, dinner, gym, read paper/blogs/etc., read more filings Sometime between Midnight - 1:00am - Bed
I'm not lying when I tell people I am a professional footnote reader.
A typical year as an investment professional:
First quarter of the year can be pretty busy as many funds tend to put more/new money to work and companies begin to hold analyst days, etc. Combine that with earnings season in late January and I easily end up putting in 12-16 hours over the weekend.
Moving into middle of the year, things definitely slow down a bit over the summer and I only work mornings (8am to noon) as needed during the weekend.
The end of the year is Jekyll and Hyde. Hours are usually manageable, but I've had some of my worst weekends in October/November.
I like the group Mr. Pink. Good idea. Figured I would jot down a day of the non-HF buyside life. I'm a credit analyst in a tax-exempt mgmt team of 6, managing about $8bn in assets.
Tax Exempt Finance deals heavily with state budgets, political news, etc. etc. So a lot of my time is spent reading legislation, newspapers obviously, blogs, etc. etc. If I am not reading, I am on a calculator, in Excel, in powerpoint, or in meetings. This is the life of a credit analyst.
6:00am - Wake up. Shower, shave, out the door 7:13am - Train to NYC 8:30am - 9am - Arrive at desk, Emails, check the bbg terminal, morning email to wife, etc.
9-10am - Respond to early desk credit requests: reading prelims, official statements, escrow agreements, too early for CAFRs. Need to wait for coffee to kick in. But no, we're not buying Puerto Rico GO's. I don't care if they're "yieldy."
10am-12:30pm CAFR time. Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, in GASB-land. Calculating reserve ratios, days cash on hand, debt service coverage, etc. Maybe calling up the CFO of Denver. Or the Asst. to the CIO of Yale. Or the COO of Orange County Water Works. You never know, that's one thing I love about working in TE finance.
12:30-1pm: Out for lunch. Maybe Zeytuna today. Or that sushi place across the street. Can't think of the name, but it's good. Adrienne's is too much of a walk in this cold, and their delivery turnaround time sucks.
1pm-3pm: More desk requests. Looking up passenger miles flown out of Regan International and comparing them to JFK's metrics.
3pm-5pm: Working on credit committee materials now. Trying to bring 10 names up for reaffirmation this week, and about 15 for sale.
5pm-6pm: Working on a writeup regarding increased EPA regulation on small water providers, and how it might affect smaller cities and towns' annual budget decisions.
6:15 - Hopefully I'm catching this train home. If not, I will be on the 7:50 train out of GCT. This is by far the best part of my day. Studying for CFA on the way home. Either that or I am late in the city, out drinking.
Hours usually similar to this around the year. Only after June I don't have to study for the exam, which is nice.
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