macrocephalopod

“They might not let me trade the weird illiquid strategies I come up with” — that’s actually a good thing because those strategies are not anywhere near as good as your backtest says they are.

Worrying about losing other peoples money as a jr analyst is an extremely beta move — 1. You won’t get enough leeway to do serious damage anyway 2. The investors are paying you to take risk. Losing money is fine. Being stupid or risk averse isn’t.

Great point. experience bit of that even learning from just 1 person. how's work:life balance for that? optimist in me hopes, it can be self taught. maybe it's naive. I also recognize, for better or for worse, I prefer running own thing vs clocking in for someone else

I lived at the office for about 3 years. 1st yr my role was booking trades, hedging fx risk and doing PnL calcs. Wkends were for creating strats which I'd pitch once a week. After that it's a mix of creating strats, maintenance, etc. Once you get your own book it's even busier.

PA is for fintwit. Shouldn’t be your aim

It's "only for fintwit" if you're narcissistic and/or not there. The absolute best traders I know are PA only - no newsletter, no customers, no boss, no points to prove; only their own AUM. Certainly not for everyone, but it's the pinnacle.