How do you become a hedge fund manager?

Question

What

1) Educational Qualifications and Background needed

2) Kind of Work Experience Required

3) The kind of Personal Qualities and Attributes necessary

etc..

Answer 1

I've spent time writing over 30 articles on how to become a hedge fund manager for Investopedia and on my own blog. Here is a link to the hedge fund employment guide on my blog: http://richard-wilson.blogspot.com/2008/...

A group of us have also recently started offering the Chartered Hedge Fund Associate (CHA) Designation at http://hedgefundgroup.org

Hope these ideas help.

- Richard

Richard Wilson

Hedge Fund Group (HFG)

http://hedgefundgroup.org

Answer 2

http://www.hedgeweek.com/

Richard C. Wilson

http://richard-wilson.blogspot.com

Answer 3

Portfolio managers generally come from strong educational backgrounds, which is how they get on to Wall St.  It is unfair to categorize the styles of funds into just a few buckets, but here's my take on the styles of funds and the career path for someone to get into the job:

"Gunslinging" - a hedge fund that very actively trades.  Successful people in these kinds of funds often come from trading programs at large investment banks.  You would need a great sense of the market and some level of understanding of the businesses behind the stocks or bonds.  An ivy league education / MBA is not as relevant.  Gotta have "street smarts" / gut feel.  Maybe you could call this a Jim Cramer / Stevie Cohen...

Macro - fund that makes very large bets on broader themes such as rising wealth in china.  Invest in all forms of stocks, bonds, currencies, indeces, etc.  Managers will be well educated, but maybe from a slightly off Wall St. path such as economics.  Think George Soros.

Value - a fund that makes bets on specific stocks versus others.  Decisions are heavily researched and analyzed, with longer holding periods.  HF'ers might come from investment banking programs or research jobs.  Think Benjamin Graham.

Event Driven - funds that place large bets on specific events such as announced mergers.  Investments are entered and exited relatively quickly, but heavily researched.  Information is a huge advantage in this game.  Similar background to value funds.  Think Ivan B (forget his last name... he and Mike Milken got into some trouble).

That's my rough look at the hedge fund world.  I think the common theme would be that you need to really get a thrill out of "being right".  Different funds measure "being right" differently, but the end result is that you need to make money.