How Big of a Pipe Dream?
I recently graduated from college. Next year I'll be working as a Research Assistant at a well-known academic institution doing research related to economic policy, with a focus on growth and employment trends in the developed world. My passion lies in understanding the way the global economy works so the job suits me extremely well.
To that end, I also trade most of my net worth in an Interactive Brokers account using a 'global macro' approach. All different asset classes: FX, equities, bonds/rates, volatility (options), commodities. Really just depends where the best opportunity seems to be. Thus far the results are pretty good. As for other market experience, I've been trading equities and following/reading about markets for nearly a decade now and worked for one summer at a very well-known HF.
If I have a clearly articulated investment strategy and a verifiable track record of success, is there a chance I would be able to parlay it straight into a PM role or buy-side book in the future? There are some strategies I would try to develop and possibly even systematize/automate if it is conceivable that the time investment this would demand could payoff into a PM type role in the future.
The RA position is likely a forerunner to grad school and a career in the academic world. But if devoting an extra few hours a day to trading could potentially leave a macro PM door open if I do well, this option likewise seems attractive. So I'm very curious as to whether this is the case. Thanks for reading!
Yes, there is a chance...
What you're doing is the best way to learn and you should keep at it, but realistically it's much more likely to help you land an analyst position one day than outside investors and a PM gig off the bat. You'd have a very hard time marketing a PA track record. Unless you are very wealthy yourself and/or know a lot of rich people who believe in you (in which case anything is possible, but you'd already know that!), your best bet would be to use your experience to apprentice yourself to someone who already has the capital.
From my experience AM firms don't give a $hit what your track record is. The only thing they care about other than preforming job duties is rain. That being said, investing is an excellent way to grow your own fortune.
It does sound like your other public policy job would be a good experience if you want to go into the HF/AM field. I actually knew someone who did this, and he eventually became an MD at one of the world's largest most respected HFs. You would probably need to get an MBA later though.
Actively trading with your entire net worth in your spare time across multiple asset classes a couple hours a day is totally fucking insane. The fact that the results have been 'pretty good so far' doesn't change that. There's a reason that people make this their full-time job, and it's not that they like to spend 5 hours of the day watching youtube. If I were in a position to hire you, and you told me you were doing this, I would likely be scared of hiring you because the most important thing that most funds are looking for in PMs are people who are not going to blow up (this is a little known fact; most multi-strat funds don't actually need rainmakers; if they have lots of guys who make 5-15% and rarely lose more than 2%, the leverage makes the model work -- this is pretty much the SAC / Milennium model), and the fact that you are willing to put your entire net worth on the line would suggest pretty poor risk and impulse control.
That being said, having a real portfolio is definitely a good thing. The likelihood that you will ever be able to parlay this into a PM job directly is pretty small (once again, risk. Joe Retail plays with his brokerage account all day, but that doesn't mean that an investment firm is going to hire him to manage a several hundred - several billion dollar institutional portfolio); but it's absolutely something you could use to get hired as an analyst. Once you've proven yourself as somebody who knows what they're doing in an institutional setting, you could obviously become a PM.
Alternatively, if you really think you're that good and can get other people to give you money, then just start your own fund. Then you can move straight to the PM role...also, if you have an already proven quantitative model or systematic strategy, then you could probably jump past the analyst step, but in that case, again you're probably just better off starting your own fund.
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