Need advice - Equity Analyst

Water Cooler Careers
#1

Hi

I need some career advice and help figuring out how to go about this transition

I currently work as a fund manager assistant for an investment manager, have done for about a year and a half now. I was looking to move into equity research analyst/ investment analyst role in the future and wanted to know how I should approach this? Anyone else made this transition from a similar path? Any current equity analysts that are able to advise? Also I am 30 now, does age have any impact on this? Sorry for all the questions!

I passed CFA a few years back if that helps

Thanks

#2

What does your role as a fund manager assistant entail? Anything transferrable?

#3

Mainly managing cash positions and placing trades on behalf of FM. Also manage the fx and general compliance issues on funds (i.e. Rebalancing and holding limits etc) so not too sure on transferable skills directly related to RA

#4

Yeah best way is probably network people within your firm for an entry level role. I don’t think your age is really an issue at 30, but if you wait a few more years then it will be extremely difficult.

#5

Why do so many people want to become "equity analysts’?

#6

Is M&A better?

#7

If you mean more money and more prestige, I’d say yes. But it doesn’t have to be that - there are a lot of jobs in finance. It’s probably because this is a CFA place and there is perceived to be a path to go into research from whatever people are doing.

#8

ER is sexy until it isn’t.

There are only 3 interesting jobs in finance really… being a trader (not so much post-volcker), doing M&A (cyclical), and researching companies to find *alpha* (hopefully not the Pure kind). Nobody does the CFA to become a corporate treasurer, controller, or risk guy.

#9

Ohai - are you able to tell us what you do?

i mean my rationale for wanting to go into ER is that it seems like a job I would find interesting. Just a bit scary that I’ve come to a point in life where I don’t know fully what I will be doing in the future

#10

I thought M&A had more to do with IB than CFA?

#11

I do one of those things mentioned above. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that there is nothing so great about ER that you can’t find somewhere else. Plus, job market is bad, so it’s hard to choose a specific thing to do. You should try to move into the thing that fits your experience the best.

#12

“er is dead”

~anonymous

#13

I would actually say the trader job and M&A are dumb jobs. trading is totally mind numbing, and not to mention easily replaced by electronic trading. M&A is more interesting but you’re just grinding numbers at the end of the day over and over in many different scenarios.

researching new and different companies to me is the most interesting of them all. there’s so many ways to analyze, and think about it, and business changes so fast, that never gets boring

#14

^i tend to agree, but in making my point I couldn’t omit the first two from the list.

#15
  1. network internally and/or 2) MBA

Your next logical move is to be a trader, which isn’t a bad job, but you can easily get stuck and do that until your asset class experiences outflows and they close the fund.