Day in the life of an investment analyst

Hi friendly monkeys,

Can anyone walk me through the day to day workflow of an investment analyst in a major Asset Management firm?

Is it more around market monitoring, screening instruments to recommend to their PMs, producing reports on portfolio performance?

Any detail you guys can provide will be really welcome.

Many thanks!

 
Best Response

Yeah blackhat obviously does a nice job outlining things there. I'll just supplement with my own routine. I think like many jobs in this industry there is no such thing as a "typical day", but I'd generally divide them by earnings days vs. non-earnings days.

During earnings (I'm west coast based so make adjustments as necessary):

-- Wake up 4:15a - 5:30a -- Get in around 5:00a-6:30a, identify priorities for morning calls. Hop on a call for anything that's owned, print and review releases for all companies in your coverage reporting -- 6:00 - 8:00a: listen to calls, take notes, quick calcs to understand changes to margin/growth assumptions -- 8:00a-9:00a morning meeting: report on held or Buy-rated names, review any shifts/inflections, first pass at takeaways and recommended actions (if any) -- 9:00a - noon: Update models, draft notes summarizing earnings, think about implications for other industry players yet to report. Calls with sellside/IR to discuss releases. Informal meetings with PMs. Talk to traders if we're adjusting positions. Noon: quick lunch Noon - 2pm: finalize and post notes / rec changes 2pm - 7p or 8p: if earnings after the close, jump on additional calls, otherwise prep for next morning releases / further analysis on trends etc. 8p-11p: dinner, change diapers, check news for anything potentially mkt moving 11p: sleep

Outside of Earnings: -- Wake up 5:30a / Get in ~6:30a -- 6:30a - 8:00a parse thru emails. Delete about 80% of the stuff from the sellside, read anything that relevant to names you own or are looking into, or thematic research from good analysts. Quick analysis of any material news. -- 8:00a morning meeting -- 8:30a - 3pm: management meetings, sell-side meetings, meet with PMs to discuss ideas and existing holdings, work on industry presentations or individual stock ideas, create/update models on new companies under coverage, deal with any IPOs coming thru, present ideas (occasionally), or just dick around and read blogs/industry rags relevant to your coverage. 3pm - whenever (usually 5-6p): most PMs are gone, so you can focus on any special research projects. I'm pretty quant so i like to get my hands dirty with ugly analysis that requires me to focus during this time, but other analysts will call up industry contacts, grab drinks with a sellside analyst, or just cut out if there isn't much going on. Also a good time to deal with compliance/training which is annoying and the bane of my existence. 5/6p - 10p: dinner, exercise (in theory), change diapers 9-10p: check in from home for any news etc. that could require attention in the morning. 11p: sleep

I could also delineate between ramping-up on coverage as a new analyst vs. maintenance mode as a more experienced analyst, but that is a whole other discussion...

 

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