GS vs. JPM vs. BlackRock AM
London: Goldman Sachs is sell-side ER, JPM and BR are both buy-side ER. What would you choose and why?
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Goldman ER sucks the big one. Literally flaming out like the Hindenburg...
I'd lean toward Blagrock. Good investors, probably good opportunity to learn under some very sharp PMs. Not super familiar with their associate track but i'm sure it's fine.
How does AM differ between banks like JPM and traditional asset manager like BR in terms of graduate training?
Not a ton to my knowledge. Normally banks would have better initial training simply because of the number of front office graduates they take on each year and most of the training can be quite uniform across the divisions at a bank (e.g. IBD / ER / AM people all will learn modelling / corporate finance / accounting / valuation etc.), hence you can scale it. Having said, it doesn't really matter since that initial benefit quickly evaporates after the first 2-3 months. If you're willing to put in some hours self-teaching I'd completely disregard early stage training as a consideration.
thanks for your response. Considering cutting costs and the increasing popularity of passive investments like ETF´s what are your thoughts on ER for the future? I also interned at a small hedge fund (trading) before but I am also concerned of automisation. It seems like it´s currently not the best time to go for either (ER/trading) of them in terms of future outlook and job security..
I think you worry too much. Changes in the industry are slow. Trading automatisation has been on the chopping block for ages now and yet some people still make a decent living out of sell-side trading. Is it different? Yes. Is it still a viable career if that's what you want to do? Absolutely. Similarly with ER, passive investments cannot take over the overwhelming amount of the market as market prices cannot stop (in the long-run) following the broad fundamentals of said company. Therefore, if everybody blindly followed the biggest market-cap companies as often dictated by indexes, this would just lead to a perennial bubble. Active management has its place and the more passives, the easier it should become for actives over time (in theory at least) due to progressively growing inefficiencies.
By the time anything ground-breaking happens you probably already would have a solid decade's worth of experience. If you're broadly comfortable that a field won't disappear in the next 5-10 years and you that it's what you want to do, just go for it. Long-term, nobody can be certain of anything, but with enough brain cells, you can adapt as times change. The beginning of your career doesn't determine your end destination. This is not Japan.
I have spoken with several people on BLKs fundamental research desk and it seems to me that they're really more closet indexers though. Would you agree? Like the desk I spoke with has a 100 stock portfolio and claimed to be all about bottoms up research...
100 stock portfolio is not uncommon. I agree with you it is probably too distributed to be impactful over the long term but that is how most l/o funds are managed.
I would go with BlackRock AM and if not that then JPM. There is almost no reason to start in sell-side research if you have buy-side offers. As for why, buy-side research is more respected and, on the buy-side, large mutual funds/ AM firms like BlackRock have more cachet than the bulge bracket banks.
All are good options. JPMAM is actually very well respected (at least in my coverage). Goldman ER is top 2/3 vote getter in most buy side shops. BlackRock has some good PMs.
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