What does a graduate with MFE degree do if he gets the position of asset manager?

Shirley Yuan

Shirley Yuan

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I am an senior student majored in Financial Engineering and I am going to apply MFE program in 2014.

I am interested in asset management and heard that one of the career paths of an MFE graduate is to be an asset manager. I'm now an intern in a commercial bank as an assistant portfolio manager. But I found out that the people here almost do routine jobs everyday. They only use EXCEL, even not use VBA, let alone other programming languages. Maybe it is because of the regulation, so they cannot do things freely. However, I wanna know more about what a MFE study would help me in my future job.

So, I am wondering what an asset managers who is not in commercial bank do? What is his career path?

Many thanks.
 
Shirley Yuan said:
I am an senior student majored in Financial Engineering and I am going to apply MFE program in 2014.

I am interested in asset management and heard that one of the career paths of an MFE graduate is to be an asset manager. I'm now an intern in a commercial bank as an assistant portfolio manager. But I found out that the people here almost do routine jobs everyday. They only use EXCEL, even not use VBA, let alone other programming languages. Maybe it is because of the regulation, so they cannot do things freely. However, I wanna know more about what a MFE study would help me in my future job.

So, I am wondering what an asset managers who is not in commercial bank do? What is his career path?

Many thanks.
Click to expand...

an asset manager at a non commercial bank has a view on the economy and trades on this.
 
AndrewChang said:
an asset manager at a non commercial bank has a view on the economy and trades on this.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply.
Actually those in commercial banks also have a view on the economy and trades. They sell and buy bonds in the interbank market. They choose what bonds they buy. Some portfolio even include capital-guaranteed and structured products and multi-trigger products and so on. But this has became routine job, take the structured products as an example, because they don't have to price the product themselves, they only need to request their counterparty. And because it's a long-term cooperation, sometimes they don't need to choose their counterparty because they are so familar with each other.
I wanna know what quantitative skills will be needed at a non commercial bank as an asset manager and the career path.
 
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I do not know any really quantitative managers. I'm sure they exist, but I would expect them to be in pure quant shops in Chicago or hedge funds in NYC and Boston. The people with the highest AUM are generally very fundamental investors, and almost all of them will have quants working for them, but the managers tend not to be very good with quant finance themselves.
 
Shirley Yuan said:
Thanks for your reply.
Actually those in commercial banks also have a view on the economy and trades. They sell and buy bonds in the interbank market. They choose what bonds they buy. Some portfolio even include capital-guaranteed and structured products and multi-trigger products and so on. But this has became routine job, take the structured products as an example, because they don't have to price the product themselves, they only need to request their counterparty. And because it's a long-term cooperation, sometimes they don't need to choose their counterparty because they are so familar with each other.
I wanna know what quantitative skills will be needed at a non commercial bank as an asset manager and the career path.
Click to expand...

I used to work at the hedge fund arm of state street. They used many quantitative techniques including statistical arbitrage trading and signal processing (mostly automated). There are definitely jobs in this field.
 
aaronhotchner said:
I do not know any really quantitative managers. I'm sure they exist, but I would expect them to be in pure quant shops in Chicago or hedge funds in NYC and Boston. The people with the highest AUM are generally very fundamental investors, and almost all of them will have quants working for them, but the managers tend not to be very good with quant finance themselves.
Click to expand...
thx
 
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