Hi there is a lecturer who reminds me of the movie 'catch me if you can'. Cos not only my semester but also from students from other semesters says that he doesn't seem to know how things are working in the financial market. He claims to be a former portfolio manager of some billion worth of U.S stock; but when he was asked questions related to his experience, he could not answer. For example, he said 'he knew (anticipated) the market would go down in 2008 before financial crisis started', so I asked him "how did you know?" he said " I just knew it" Another example, he likes using some technical words which people in general might not know e.g. mutual funds; one time he said 'he did research on mutual fund for about a year' so I said 'a passive investment strategy, wow, so what did you find?', he looked somewhat surprised as if he didn't expect me to know what it is. " That's what I am going to do now!" (Didn't he just say he did research on it about a year?) he also claims he has a good reputation in the market so I googled his name but his name only appears with our University name. I initially thought he is a bit strange but then I have recently watched 'double identity' in which one main character has multiple identities and he genuinely believes that what he think he is is him (e.g. former police officer, a kid, a woman etc) (which is called 'multiple identity syndrome'); My uni is not in US, but he is from there; maybe I have misunderstood and overestimated the roles of portfolio manager in US. What are common roles of portfolio manager in US? Because in US, I understand that some nice words have been developed in order to avoid offending people, for example, janitor sounds way better than cleaner etc
just curious, why do you care? did you managed to find his bio on linkedin? i manage my own money, i can call myself a portfolio manager of my own money too. end of the day, a lecturer is still a proper job to pay rent and taxes.
My cousin runs one of the biggest short term fixed income funds in the business. He won't tell you anything you don't read on bloomberg/cnbc. Most portfolio managers aren't market prognosticators. They may have been, early in their careers as analysts. But as they move into PM roles ( and it probably wasn't prognostication that made them a PM), They assume over-all management of the "the process". They have internal meetings to discuss operations ( administration, risk. compliance) and external meetings (road shows, company visits, steak dinners at Peter Lugers/Smith and Wollensky) to sell "the service" to the clientele. The rare PM's who discover "edges" on their own usually jump ship and to become hedge fund managers.
From the 50,000 foot view,in a nutshell and very generically speaking, what the lay financial person thinks of as a 'trader' is essentially a 'portfolio manager' on the buy side.
Hi victorycountry, looking at the offers on the website efinancialcareers it doesn't seem an underconsidered job. I think that the CFA program (the entire program of 3 levels) is a seriuos way to be recognized as a serious portfolio manager.
what does a portfolio manager do? habitually under-perform the s&p 500 whilst collecting a large paycheck!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Great quote ....................................................................................... It's actually a WARNING. Having agreed with that WARNING; pm like Carl Ichan + jack Schwager top traders[trading books] tend to tell the truth......................................................................................................................................... .PS ''Underperform S&P 500'' LOL; but as IBD noted, that 's easy to do[underperform] over many years. Besides SPY does not have commission/slippage; till you trade/invest IT. Then they kick dogs stocks like Citigroup out of DOW;amen, good discussion.