Bob Wakefield
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

I think you’re thinking of wealth managers. I don’t mean to belittle them in anyway shape or form. They work hard for their commissions and they earn every penny. But their function is essentially a sales function. The good ones are highly knowledgeable about wealth management and do a ton of work to obtain their knowledge through a rigorous licensing and continuing education program. However, they don’t actually manage money. They (usually) take client money give it to someone else to manage. Those people are called portfolio managers and that’s what I’ll be writing about.

Portfolio management IS a job and a very hard one. The career field is incredibly difficult to break in to because it is so lucrative. As a result, a lot of portfolio managers come out of top tier schools with exceptional GPAs. It’s even harder if you’re from a second or third tier school.

Even if you do get your foot in the door, you can expect 60–100 hour work weeks and long evenings with no weekends for three years while you study for all three levels of the Charted Financial Analyst exam. Your average day will be spent analyzing financial statements and market conditions, putting together complex cash flow models, crafting equity analyst reports and you HAVE to get it right because if you don’t the portfolio will lose money and you’ll be shown the door.

I lived something of this life while a student equity analyst in KU’s Applied Portfolio Management program. If you think that portfolio managers don’t earn their living running other people’s money, I can assure you that you are wrong.

    Bob Wakefield

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    Living at the intersection between finance, economics, and data science/engineering. Follow me on Twitter! @BobLovesData