Hey all,
In previous posts I mentioned that I am moving to the buy side into an equity research role. I had previously been with an small sell side shop focusing on special situations. I was approached for the new role based on a previous work contact.
I know that there are clear cultural differences between sell side and buy side, and that a lot of these things are fund specific. I'm looking forward to joining the team, and have really enjoyed my interaction with the new guys so far.
I've used the Life on the Buyside blog before which has been nice, but from any younger monkeys out there who made a similar transition, do you have any advice to approach the transition, or anything to consider in the switch? Obviously, your job continues to be to generate value-added research -- but is there anything that you explicitly saw that was a huge difference in that process that you didn't expect?
Thanks!
My experience was from boutique IB to small HF
Somethings I was a bit surprised by: - Everything moves more quickly - gotta work on an idea and get to an educated opinion fast - No one gets an A for effort - if an idea / trade doesn't work, it doesn't matter how much work you did or how well you had 99% of outcomes covered. If the CEO got caught with a hooker and the stock tanks, it was bad news for you - Formatting is not a buy side skill, nor do they care - models, write-ups, etc from the guys I worked with all looked terrible. It was difficult for me to adjust at first, knowing how important perfect formatting was on the sell side. This goes back to my first point - formatting takes too much time - Less pretentious than sell side - Maybe it's that sell siders are trying to prove themselves in a larger corporate environment or trying get to the buyside, but the buysiders I've worked with were all more down to earth than sell siders even though they were more wealthy / more successful. Sell side = hermes tie, buyside = quarter zip pullover sweatshirt
Agree with everything grosse said, especially the pace. Shit moves fast. On the sell side, you cover 5 to 10 names tops. On the buyside, it's multiples of that, and you're always looking for new names. I'm sure I've looked at over 750 stocks in the last 3.5 years.
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