I've heard that there are many paths to working as a portfolio manager. Is quantitative research / trading one path to portfolio management?
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It depends on the type of firm. Quantitative Research will not lead directly to a PM job at a L/S hedge fund, but it could lead to a PM job at a Quant fund after years working there.
There's no one path to PM - keep in mind that becoming a portfolio manager is really rare to begin with, so it's useless to talk about the "realistic" ways to get there. It's basically akin to asking, "what's the best way for me to become a billionaire?"
Anyhow, try to get a quantitative research position before asking this type of question, because even that isn't trivial to begin with.
As others said...it's hard to pick "paths" to PMs...they've come from all over. Getting to the top of a quant fund would be most likely I would imagine with a quant analysis background, theoretically. But, of course, anything is possible.
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