How To Become A Hedge Fund Manager

Hedge funds aren’t some new occurrence that have been just sprouted up after the global recession which first started in 2008. When answering the question of how to become a hedge fund manager, you should first of all know what a hedge fund is (insert link here). We’ve included a link to the relevant page rather than discussing that intricate matter here.

The first step in how to become a hedge fund manager is to assess if it really is the correct career path for you. This might sound a bit strange, however working in hedge funds is not your regular 9-5 job. It’s one that means you could be spend upwards of 75 hours in the office and conversing with investors at ludicrous times of the day. For many, money is a key driving factor. However when it comes down to it, if you don’t have the self determination to carry out the job on a day to day basis then all in the money in the world won’t be enough to motivate.

So, if you’ve decided that you have the self determination to work in this area of financial investment, the next step is to actually learn how to become a hedge fund manager. In this case, it’s actually a simple scenario…

This initially would involve you reading up as much information as possible on hedge funds in general. Thanks to RSS feeds now, you can easily bookmark hedge fund and investment related websites and you’ll get all the up to date and latest information that other managers and sites are posting. This is a rather lengthy procedure and not something that could be completed over a weekend. Coupled with this is actually getting in contact with smaller funds and explain to them that you’re interested in learning how to become a hedge fund manager and ask if you could possibly do some free work experience with a fund. This might seem alien that you’d offer to do work for free in a business where there is a massive turnover, but this will put you in a good stead since it will show that you’re truly interested when it comes to finding out how to become a hedge fund manager.

You can only learn so much from books, and over time the reading material you’ve used as well as the on the job experience will complement each other extremely well.

Social media and networking is something that everyone is using now, although the majority of people are only doing this in terms of Facebook and Twitter. One key site that potential hedge fund managers should use is Linkedin. This could be classed as a professionals version of Facebook, without all the annoying and pointless status updates and memes.

By employing the use of Linkedin, it can help you be seen by other people in the business. On Linkedin, when someone’s profile is viewed, it also comes up with similar people in the field which can be used by head hunters. Of course, by this stage you should also have developed a wealth of knowledge in the field and ideally you should have developed (or start to develop) a business plan.

This doesn’t need to be the length of the magna carta, but it should outline your goals over the initial year and also the first five years. One of the most crucial aspects in this business plan is to lay out how much money you’ll need, and any potential losses you’re expecting to initially make. Of course, you should also choose a name for the fund which is unique but not silly. Think of it this way, would you invest in a fund that sounded ludicrous?

The final step would then involve getting money from a brokerage company such as Morgan Stanley after you’ve decided what kind of investment you’d like to make. For the sake of illustration, this might be real estate, oil etc.

We hope that you’ve found this page helpful and it has answered your question of how to become a hedge fund manager.