Career Move

Long time lurker, first time poster, guys.

Anyone have any input/experience about making a lateral move from risk management (treasury) into a conventional portfolio management role (after a few years)? One of my buddies wants me to go work for him in treasury (primarily risk management, quant, simulations for ALM), but not sure how it aligns with PM roles.

I have always been curious about the risk side of the house, but not sure if moving there will enable me to come back to the research side of the house. I’m only thinking about it because I have seen risk folks here make a play at portfolio decisions with regards to ALM.

Any input is appreciated.

Any good PM will certainly evaluate risks, and it will be helpful. Which is why a lot of investment houses literally have a chief risk officer. But risk directly to PM is not so common.

Thanks, itera. Can someone comment on how relevant the ALM stuff is with regards to managing portfolios? Maybe it’s a loaded question, but it seemed (from the L3 curriculum) that there’s a shift to ALM. So you PMs out there, are you putting more emphasis on ALM or are research and AO still the driving factors in making PM decisions?

I am obviously building up to the PM role, so would be helpful to know where the focus is. If there’s a shift into ALM, I wouldn’t mind getting the experience.

Thanks.

From my humble point of view. AML will not build on your PM credentials. I am with a Hedge Fund accounting firm and all funds (regardless of mutual, Hedge or PE) will have their own Operations team or administrator or custodians to handle the AML part.

Portfolio manager only has 1 duty and that is to focus on heir portfolio earnings.

All AML matters will not reach them. The very initial step of a subscription of a fund is to be AML before it can be used by the Portfolio Manager.

Experience in ALM would be useful for managing fixed income portfolios.

Appreciate, the input, guys.