There may be, but the point here is that you don’t “need” a PhD to win quant fund roles, necessarily. Yes, some firms/groups prefer it, but it’s not a universal requirement.

I think there is a preference for PhDs as a PhD is more likely to able to figure things out on their own especially if confronted with something with no known solution.

Paul

Great article Brian!

I don’t know enough about quant funds to say, sorry. You have to get into a position where you’re making more of the decisions or get more unofficial responsibility, despite not being a PM yet, so the answer might be to go to a smaller/growing fund where you can do that more easily (after working at a larger one first for experience). But this is just a guess, and I honestly don’t know enough about this field to give specific tips on moving to a PM role specifically at a quant fund if you have trouble proving your track record.

Many thanks for the answer.
If the CFA is not useful in the transition from quant researcher to quant PM, what else could be useful? I have been reading some complaints from quants who would like to be promoted to PM but don’t succeed because they don’t have a personal track record, which they say is a bit of a paradox since the only way to have a personal track record is to already be a PM… Can you clarify on these situations, especially at large/top quant funds?

1) No, unlikely, I don’t think anyone in quant cares about the CFA.

2) There are some years in which quant funds outperform or underperform, which can explain the salary/bonus differences. But if you adjust for performance differences, no, not really. The main difference is that quant funds tend to be more expensive to start and operate, so salary/bonus levels at lower AUM may be limited.

The only way to decide here is to complete an internship in both fields and see which one you prefer. In general, it’s easier to get into quant funds a few years out of school if you did something else beforehand, while it’s very difficult to do the same for IB. So maybe start with IB, and if you don’t like it, consider applying to quant funds.

1) Your first question is too open-ended for me to say anything specific. What is your exact plan? Work for 2 years and then go to your parents’ business? Work for 5-10 or 20 years and do that? What are you actually interested in doing? Is your personality better suited for sales/client roles or programming roles?

2) Yes. Econ is a generally useless major anyway.

3) Probably not unless it’s a corporate finance internship at one of those companies. Otherwise, you need something closer to finance. Yes, the name helps, but they’ll still view it as an engineer making a career change.

4) It seems to be a semi-target. If you can get solid internship and start early, I don’t think you need to transfer unless you are 100% set on Goldman Sachs and cannot accept any other possible outcome in tech/finance.