Anyone here work at a hedge fund? Is it as fun as it sounds?

Might be stressful.

I listened for less than two minutes. I cannot tolerate listening to him more than two minutes. He lied. He said it is legal what he admitted to doing. He waited until Statue of Limitations on his crime is long enough ago so he will not be charged. Most crimes in the industry are rarely charged. Is that his definition of legal?

It's really just a lot of work. I'm sure some people enjoy it, but the raw hours and travel you have to put in to stay in rat race of high finance are too much for most.

The hours were nearly as bad as HF but, after speaking with some college friends, I worked about 20 fewer per week (about 70-80 instead of 90-100).

Pay isn’t exactly low though, and the work is highly interesting. However, the stress levels are off the charts.

Adding on to what I said, they worked at some of the top BB banks (think Goldman Sachs and firms of that tier) and were basically slaves for 3 years.

After that, they’d either stay and have more normal (~75 hour) weeks while making more as well, or they’d jump to various other related fields (PE, VC, etc).

my son is entering this field, so very interested in these perspectives. He has been interning in M&A and has some investment banking job lined up upon graduating in May, though he is still checking out other companies and seeing if there might be something better. He didn't seem interested in hedge funds or mutual fund companies at all. The little I know about HF is that it is very stressful, long hours, and can take a toll on a person.

what interests me more than anything is the different facets of finance, though, and M&A sounds very robust, with different industries in which to specialize, and more than enough going on to be very viable and lots of business.

Sounds like a certain Seattle software guy watched The Wolf of Wall Street at home last night and thought, "I want women, coke, and yachts and I'm smart enough to do it better and by the book!".

Making an absolute KILLING and lagging an S&P 500 index fund while doing it? Sounds like fun to me!

Cramer managed some money. He was running no real hedge fund. There are daytraders who trade more capital. Also, days of buy buy and sell sell are pretty much over. Everything is quant right now. Everything has been hedged to the hilt that you really have to get the direction of the market right to make $. Ken Griffin and his Citadel options making business pretty much run the Wall St. Hedge funds are becoming just another gamblers to be eaten by them for profit.

I know a guy who used to run one. He sold the business because it was extremely stressful and the customers were often terrible to deal with. Now he just day trades for himself - probably spends almost as much time on active trading/research on a typical day, but now he can also take a day off whenever, go on vacation, etc.

There are more jobs needed to be filled in banking, financial services and trading industries than there are accounting, economics and finance majors willing to do the jobs. He is an example. Cramer didn't major in accounting, economics or finance. Many of the youngster on here will work in the industry. There are many honest people in the industry. One does not have to cheat. Cramer admitted in this video clip to doing worse than what federal law enforcement suspected Warren Buffett of doing in 1960's. Basically, Warren Buffett was indicted for allegedly doing far less market manipulation than Cramer admitted. If he had to cheat to make money, I recommend staying away from Cramer. Most who cheat/do illegal activities in the industry are never criminally charged but most who cheat are fired. Why risk getting fired and escorted out of the building by 300 pound security personnel?

I “interned” at two weeks for a boutique IB firm specializing in M&A in their specific industry as part of my high school’s career development program - basically, after the end of classes senior year, we’d spend two weeks exploring an industry we were interested in.

The work is often repetitive and mindless (a lot of Excel and changing formatting on PowerPoints), but the deals are actually enjoyable. However, even at this small (but prestigious) firm, they’d usually work about 80-85 hour weeks, but near deadlines it’d go to about 100-110. they wouldn’t be called into the office at 2AM, but there were (busy) times when they’d work from about 6-6:30 to nearly midnight.

This sounds convoluted - basically, I interned at a small firm that’s very well regarded in their industry.

No changes to anything else I said though.

It's an ethnic mafia. Search "Early Life" of all the big players.

Traditionally in U.S., groups ...

1) Old money relatives of House of Windsor. Prescott Bush and his offspring are related to King Charles.

2) Irish-Americans.

South Asians and east Asians are being represented more and more. This is not what you are thinking about though.

just looked it up. A typical hedge fund manager works about 40 hrs/wk.

And average salary is $129,890 per year

So, still time to run and probably even afford a pair of super shoes and an out of town race. Beyond that, you might want to look at the other areas in finance. But you will undoubtedly sacrifice a lot of free time.

Cool story bro.

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maybe not an ethnic mafia per se, but the elite hedge funds tend to draw employees from the top colleges. I've been told that the same goes for M&A, for that matter. Namely, UPenn, Harvard, Stanford, Cornell., are the top of the list in that order.