I don’t have a strong view, sorry. Quant was in favor for a while, but lost some of its luster in the covid years as quant strategies underperformed. Sentiment around quant vs. fundamental funds tends to shift back and forth over time based on recent performance stats.

What are your thoughts on both Funds? Do you think there will be more and more Quant Funds over Credit Funds or Fundemental Funds on the market? Or it’s half and half?

The main advantage of credit over the others you mention is that it’s less specialized than a quant or macro fund, so you could, in theory, get other credit-related roles more easily afterward. So it is “better” in that sense. The day-to-day work depends completely on your skills and preferences, so I can’t answer that for you. Multi-manager vs. single-manager is a different question because credit funds and groups could exist at both fund types. This issue is more about whether you prefer short-term trading or longer-term investing.

Compensation depends mostly on fund size and performance, not strategy. So I don’t think there is a big compensation difference (though I’ve never seen reliable data for average compensation by fund type/strategy).

Those are the main trade-offs. Another one is that private credit arguably gives you better exit opportunities, or at least broader ones, whereas credit HFs are more specialized. You could move around within private credit firms and even back to roles like PE/IB more easily than you could go from a credit HF to one of those. But not sure it’s a massive difference, more of a modest one.

PC tends to be slower paced with less burnout, although comp is also longer term. HFs are fast paced and higher pressure on a day to day basis, but with potentially much higher annual payouts – anything else to consider?

Thanks!

Thanks for the great article. It would be greatly helpful to learn about work/life/career path within large fixed income AM (Like PIMCO, etc.) Feel like very little information is out there.

Yes, but one big difference is that the compensation ceiling tends to be much lower at places like PIMCO because fees are lower and they do not focus on the types of higher-risk/potential return bonds that most credit HFs do. Also, IB experience probably helps less for those types of funds. I haven’t done a detailed search, but many people who get in have previous AM experience or credit experience elsewhere.