I am currently working as a quantitative analyst on rates and credit, prior to this I was a trading assistant on a rates desk. The market is getting increasingly competitive and it is very hard to move even internally to a position closer to the business (i.e. trading and structuring)
I am now 33 and attended level 1 of the CFA. What would be my best shot at being some day a portfolio manager in your opinion ?
Quant portfolio management has taken a shellacking recently, both because quant models got creamed as the credit crisis started, then people redeemed in the midst of the crisis, and much trend-following (which a lot of quant models do) has been underperforming massively recently. People are still looking for new signals to throw willy-nilly into regressions, so I suppose there is that.
My guess is that there is still more quant work on the sell side, because there will always be a need for transactions, and banks can customize payoffs while hedging appropriately whether or not total AUM is rising or falling, and they will need quants for that, unless everything becomes completely standardized and cookie-cutter (which is a possibility).
That said, networking is probably the only way to the buy side these days. There’s the Chicago Quantitative Alliance, the Society of Quantitative Analysts, and other organizations like that you can use to meet people. Or read the Journal of Portfolio Management and write to the authors to develop a professional relationship.
It’s not really that different that getting to the buy side as a non-quant person, except that the specific organizations and people are slightly different. The one chanllenge with quant work is that it’s hard to arrive with “a sample investment idea” the way fundamental researchers do, because what you really have is a “process idea” which means that it’s harder to give away “free samples” of your thinking without giving away the whole package, so the pressure to tell them all-or-nothing is higher. I have no doubt that quant shops advertise roles so that they can interview people and ask them for ideas that may get tested and implemented whether or not the interviewee ever had a chance of getting hired in the first place.
Just my impressions from the quants that I know. I do quant-lite work myself, without being a full-time quant.