Yes, but it changes from year to year, which is why this article doesn’t give the exact timing. It used to start closer to the end of the year for First Year Analysts a long time ago, but PE firms kept pushing it up… and then they delayed it a bit during covid, but now it seems that it’s early again. The large hedge funds roughly follow this, but they’re still less structured overall, and people win roles at different times.

Thanks for this great post.

Just to confirm when On-Cycle hedge fund recruiting is, you say that this is the same time as large PE firms. From what I’ve read, Large PE firms on cycle is from late August to October, so is this the same time frame for Hedge funds?

Thanks

I’m sorry, but I can’t offer you any advice here because we don’t really advise on that topic (finding clients for your trading services) on this site. But I would probably start by reaching out to local wealth management firms and groups and seeing if any of them might have clients who are looking for occasional “active trading” services.

The best thing to do here is to ignore the work experience requirement, research and write your own stock pitch, and submit it to them anyway. If they’re unresponsive or say that you need more experience, use it to apply to other jobs instead (entry-level ER, other HFs, maybe asset management). Do not spend more than a week selecting your company and building a simple valuation and stock pitch for it (at most, maybe a ~200-row DCF with most attention paid to the revenue and expense drivers).

If you don’t get a response, try again, and also reach out to other, similar firms as well as the ER and related roles. In the meantime, keep researching other companies and come up with 1-2 other ideas so that you can submit your work to other positions you apply for.

They have an email address on their website for employment inquiries. I am not confident in my own abilities, however. A few months ago they have an opening for an analyst role that required at least four years of relevant equity research experience and asked applicants to send resume and sample research report to that email address.

And me? I don’t have any finance experience. So far I only have some academic and data science R&D type of experience. The only thing I have to show for is the CFA Level I that I passed earlier this year. I have also gone through your modeling course Case #5: Equity Research / Asset Management / Hedge Fund on pretty much everything other than Module 5, 8, 9 (I skipped some lessons whole doing some that are optional). I have never written a research report, and I know I am bad at written communication, so I definitely need to improve on that, as well as idea generation to pitch investments (one of the the thing they look for in the analyst role is “credible track record in identifying investment opportunities”).

I am a little lost in what to do, though. Therefore, I am wondering if you have some ideas of what sort of concrete, structured, actionable steps that I could take to approach this. Highly appreciated.

It’s unlikely unless you find a hedge fund that focuses on tech or operates more like a VC by investing in early-stage companies.

I come from a quant background (did a MFE in a Top 10 program) and kind of agree with Brian. If you are targeting on top quant funds and want to be a Quant Trader or Quant Researcher, you should definitely consider getting a PhD in math or physics from a top program to have an edge in recruiting at these places, or at least a MFE/MFM from a top school. The math and stats and programming skills required at quant funds are insane, and from my experience, you got little chance to get in if you didn’t study engineering, math, stats, cs, or physics in college. However, there are still a lot of funds focusing on long/short investing that lean more on evaluating individual companies based on company fundamentals instead of using mathematic models and statistical techniques to extract and analyze signals from the markets. These long/short investing funds also use a lot of data and need you to have some degree of quantitative skills. It’s just the quantitative skills they require are not as rigorous as a quant fund would need. I think people should figure out first what kind of HF they want to work at and what kind of HF analyst they want to be. Then they can work towards that direction.

Thanks, Brian! Appreciate your insights!