Sell Side vs Buy Side Bonus

My friend work in buyside tell me that unless you are a PM, your bonus won’t exceed 100% of your base. Is that the case? If so, that number looks too low. Given in sell side, you can still make 100% bonus even if you are not a book runner in some good desk in good years.

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No, that’s a ridiculous comment. Many non PM’s in the HF space clear 100% of base. Also, it is different by fund, at multi manager firms if you have any impact on PnL you have higher upside than 100%. Again, fund performance, fund size, your role, etc, will all matter on how you get paid out.

They may be referring to “entry level” HF roles, the expectation there is ~50-100% of base for your first year. 

 

Execution traders on buy side? Yes probably, the further you get from generating PnL the lower your upside is. That being said, most people aren’t going to the buy side to work purely on execution. Working on execution that requires strong investment understanding (i.e. how to limit costs, how to appropriately structure bets, etc), basically the more it is value add as opposed to basically a computer, the more your upside is on the bonus. 

 

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just google it...you're welcome

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