What's it like working as an Investment Analyst at a Hedge Fund?

Hi! 👋

I work at a hedge fund based in London that specialises in UK & Asian equities.

The firm is relatively small in terms of headcount, but fairly large in terms of assets under management (AUM).

I joined as a graduate in December 2021.

⏳ Hours

Typically, I start work at 9am and finish at 6pm.

However, the job isn't really a 'clock in, clock out' role; there may be times when you have to adjust to different working hours. For example, there have been occasions where I have had to take early morning meetings with clients in Asian offices.

🗓️ Typical day-to-day tasks

A typical workday could look like the following:

• Coordinate with the marketing team to discuss opportunities we should present to clients.

• Write up an investment thesis (a long document outlining an idea behind a particular investment proposal). These documents are simple Word documents, so I don’t have to bother with lots of PowerPoint formatting.

• Conduct financial analysis to help support my investment thesis and client proposals. I use a combination of a Bloomberg terminal & Excel for viewing and analysing the relevant data.

• If there are any client meetings during the day, they will typically take 1-1.5 hours. For every client meeting, I may be required to do several days of thinking and prep work to make sure I have thoughtful and good suggestions for the client!

🪜 Expected career progression

The hierarchy at my firm is very 'flat'; there aren't lots of different levels with changing job titles.

The key to progressing as an Investment Analyst in my role is to build up your credibility and experience. You do this simply by increasing your 'hit rate'—the % of times you get investment decisions right. Early on in my career, this has meant building my own independent investment portfolio outside of work, which acts as my track record and can hopefully speak for my ability.

In the hedge fund world, you can become a Portfolio Manager once you have at least a decade or two of experience (usually around the age of 40-50+). Currently, there are just three Portfolio Managers at my firm. They make the final decision on investments and therefore have ultimate accountability for the performance of the firm's investment activity.