What’s the best career path for S&T/AM/HF?
Unlike the typical “from IBD to PE” path for most bankers, the career path for trading/investment professionals is not so structured. I’ve heard so many people pursuing a “from S&T to HF” path, but does it really worth it?
1. Do hedge fund professionals really have the highest compensation and therefore the destination for traders/investors?
2. How about people spending all their career in the market making? Why didn’t they move to hedge funds?
3. How about the asset management professionals (e.g. BlackRock PMG)? Do they really make significantly less than hedge fund PMs?
No offense to any professional!
Regard
They are all different jobs
the major paydays in hedge fund land come from actually running a fund and either making 20% returns on your own capital invested and/or running such a large fund that collecting 20% of the returns generated is a big payday for you
staying On the sell-side is a different job. Not as common for the average sell-sider to have a larger payday but more likely on the sell-side to actually have a job that pays just given the size of the sell-side/trading/banking industry compared to the HF industry. Less HF seats out there. From what I know the sell-side is more of a sales job (hence sell-side) while buyside more focused on picking the right investments and making them or watching them increase in value
The asset managers also a slightly different job. More focused on increasing AUM and earning a management fee and getting big paydays that way as opposed to the HF focus on the carry or the banks/sell-side focus on trading
from what I have seen average professional at Hf may make more money than average professional at bank or AM. But that may be due to just less people per dollar of revenue generated. Otherwise not sure if I have much data. The headhunters/recruiters/wso even may have better data for you
Thanks for your thoughtful comments! How about compensation, if you don't mind me asking? There are rumors in universities saying that HF>MM>AM. Is that true?
Maybe at junior levels. At senior levels more about performance and revenue generated from what I can tell. All these roles become about revenue / growing your business if you want a big payday from the little I know about them
you need to be way more targeted with your questions.... "compensation" is different if you're a quant at goldman vs a rates trader at bofa or a salesman at bnp paribas. tiers or arbitrary this is > this don't exist.
unless you're ft in any of these roles you should really worry about securing an internship/job first before nitpicking over pay packages. if you're good you will make more than enough money & be able to have 'exit opps'
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