Feeling Lost in Macro/Credit/Rates/FX Cross Asset Analyst Role
For the last two years, I've been working at an Asset Management firm in a highly general, "cross asset" analyst position on the EM investment team. My prior background was working as a researcher at the federal reserve on macro/banking/asset pricing research, and then doing a fairly quantitative economics MS degree. This is my first role in the financial industry. My mandate appears to be researching EM sovereign and corporate credit, rates, and FX through either a quant or fundamental lense with very little guidance or infrastructure. I've built a couple of top down valuation/screening tools for credit and FX that look at the relationship between prices and macro fundamentals, but lately, I feel a bit lost like I don't even know where to begin to look for trade ideas.
Is this how "macro investing" feels in general? or is something missing in my background/experience or something is ill-defined about my role? I feel like I need to develop more "fundamental" skills, but not sure exactly what I need to learn to be more useful in this role. I really enjoy thinking about credit and rates and macro, but it seems like I missed the building of a critical foundation by never having worked at a BB, or did an MBA or CFA, etc. What kind of trajectory am I on and how can I fill in some gaps?
Maybe if you had worked in sovereign research at a ratings agency, or as a desk economist at the IMF or as a research associate for an economist in a markets facing role you would have the "perfect" sequencing for your role but frankly given your background at the Fed and your academic chops you have the tools to be successful at your role (CFA/MBA would not help you). The reality is you have a very coveted seat so would do your best to grow into the role. The downside is these roles don't really have well defined "training" and sounds like you didn't get the benefit of a "kind" mentor so if anything is ill suited it is that they didn't have you working with/under someone for a bit.
What I can gather is you have the tools, but are having some difficulty applying them. I would recommend getting a better sense from the PM's what kind of idea's they are looking for. Don't ask directly as you probably should have figured this out by now but for example in the credit space what is benchmark bogey? Does it seem like they just want buy/sell/holds on the big index constituents? Are they looking for ideas to generate alpha on specific curves? Basis ideas? Or general calls on these sub asset classes against each other? Or rather a best ideas so you like country x, how would you like to express it? As you can see there are a multitude of ways to get at it and to have someone who is a little green to just look for best ideas across FX/Rates/Credit is a bit harsh (i.e. all of the aforementioned but the same for FX and rates)- and as an aside corp credit doesn't really fit as it's a different skillset (balance sheet junkie), unless you are just making a call on corp credit spreads in general (or maybe big benchmark names).
Beyond that there is no textbook. If you want to know how to analyze an economy pick up a ratings report or and IMF article IV, if you wan tot know how people generate trade ideas find some good sellside strategists to follow so you can at least see some ideas about how to go about it, if you want to know how to build valuation tools and push the envelope in terms of different ways to look at things then you can find FICC related text books and or academic papers.
If you are successful you could become a PM one day, which is a pretty sweet gig. Good luck
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