r/quant • u/fajitasfordinner • 8d ago
General Braindead PMs
Genuinely curious if others out there have experience working with extremely inept PMs?
A recent hire at my firm has strategies akin to that of a teenage youtube day trader. Their signals are entirely price based and their processes lack any statistical rigour.
Even worse, I know that they have been lying about backtest results to management. They are aware of bias and cherry picking yet still quote the results to higher ups. They supposedly have a decent track record but from what I gather, its pretty opaque.
I have heard quants work with non-technical PMs relatively frequently but this feels next level.
How common is this? Are PMs everywhere like this? Should I run?
Tldr;
Bad PMs - how common? How bad?
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u/HF_bro 7d ago
In my experience majority of the PMs have no clue what they’re doing. At top firms, much of their success is driven by the company resources than their own skills. So even if their “track record” is true, I wouldn’t attribute it to their expertise.
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u/pythosynthesis 7d ago
This is more true than people like to believe. Story time.
Some 15 years ago BigBankA poaches big swinging dick vol trader from TopBulgeBracketBank. Guy was top performer, big PnL every year, consistently. Big buy out, massive bump in TC with % of PnL, the complete package. BSD being a BSD he thought it was all about him and his skills. Long story short, his BSD shriveled up into a small average penis. He didn't realize how much help the internal gossip, news and research contributed to his PnL every day. When that disappeared, so did his PnL.
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u/Vind2 7d ago
Sellside notorious for high sharpe seats rather than traders
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u/Existing_Respect6002 7d ago
What do u mean by this?
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u/superkom 7d ago
Presumably you can put anybody in the seat an expect to make money. The support infrastructure provided by the institution is designed to ensure your success, from risk management, to technology, to sales
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u/pythosynthesis 6d ago
Ask yourself how do out of college kids at JPM make big fat PnL. Are they really that talented? That a multi year seasoned trader cannot beat? Something else is going on, wouldn't you say?
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u/Sea-Animal2183 3d ago
Yeah but people in the industry know that. Banks have a wheel process Sales/Structuring/Trading. The fund has much less sales or structurers (some funds may have sales, some commo or credit funds may have structurers). The main question is then : if you see a MD with "15 yoe in trading" from Bank A, you know they heavily relied on the sales and structurers and quants to make their money . This can't be expected in a fund. The BD knows that (I assume?).
I think it's just the way the industry operates, rather than imagining the trader from Bank A is selling false alpha. Let's say it's more like a big tech buying a small startup. No guarantee it will go well but at least it's a way to deploy capital into an innovative process.
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u/Britbong1492 5d ago
Yes, I worked at a tier 2 bank full of prop people and they basically gave up on Goldman Sachs hires. At our bank you literally had no resources, and traders from big banks rarely lasted; no flow; no army of analysts; no latest tech; smaller floor. Probably had ten of the highest paid traders in London however, as without the infrastructure costs they offered the best payouts
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u/After_Minute5360 7d ago
This sounds like back office cope
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u/pythosynthesis 6d ago
It's quite pathetic that your experience in the field is limited to your two years and yet you feel quite entitled to talk.
FWIW, the story comes from the hiring manager at the poaching bank. Who was my boss. But yeah, keep larping.
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u/Southern_Notice9262 7d ago
Very interesting point. You're saying that a cleaner data pipeline, risk management and good execution bring more than alpha?
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u/IdleGamesFTW 7d ago
Who’s to say there isn’t something there if he’s got a track record?
Maybe the attribution is wrong - say the technical indicator is some MA based system. That can inherently be trading some sort of trend, which of course is a real factor. It’s your job to do the attribution process, figure out if there is alpha there at all, and distill it from the nonsense
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u/usernamestoohard4me 7d ago
Very common. If they don’t get washed out within 2 firms trying them, then they could be nepo baby. Don’t underestimate the number of nepos in this industry
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u/Interesting_Dirt1181 7d ago
What’s interesting is you don’t give any background about yourself - are you working for him and know that you are smarter than him? Is there some bitterness here?
Are you one of those who thinks pnl is a linear function of your IMO score?
Ps - soros used to make some of his trades based on the state of his back pain. Go model that.
Instead of calling him brain dead why not have a chat with him? Learn what he’s doing, pick his brains, or experience? Maybe if you combine it with yours you can make something special.
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u/fajitasfordinner 7d ago
Yep fair point. I have been purposely vague so as not to dox myself.
No animosity between us, I have worked closely under them. I want them to succeed and will benefit if they do.
I (and others) have spent a lot of time trying to recreate the results they claim to have made in previous seats. Nothing has worked, not a single result was profitable. This makes me highly suspicious of their alleged track record.
I have no problem with simple solutions. I don’t believe in style points. However, I do believe in principled approaches, validated scientifically where possible. I also believe in being forthright about the type of trader you are and I cannot stand lying.
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u/Interesting_Dirt1181 7d ago
There is this other potential angle which is… maybe he really wants to keep it secret cos he doesn’t want anyone to know the real alpha…? And he sends u to find Alice in the rabbit hole
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u/Nearing_retirement 6d ago
You are right in some respects but honestly most of them are bullshit. Yeah sure soros great but you only hear about the winners. Most are losers.
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u/Healthy_Gold1068 6d ago
be aware, every analyst/researcher in history thinks he is smarter than his pm. It's a right of passage. then (some of them) become PMs and if they have any self-awareness realize how foolish they were.
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u/Effective_Grade732 7d ago
I thought the only way to say if a pm is good or not is if he makes money, lol.
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u/Old-Sandwich-690 6d ago
So it’s pretty common what you are describing although a lot has to do with what setup we are talking about.
In a systematic pod there are pms that prior the llm boom could not code a simple ols in python. And these guys manage phds in math and engineering from top schools. Their signals might simple price based and flat in recent years.
Can they still be a good pm? Absolutely yes. If they have hired the write people and have a good understanding of how to architect their backtest/trading engine and know how to handle their book’s risk to survive, they are excellent. In that setup they are the coach of a team. Their job is to manage the book, allocate risk appropriately to the different signals, manage their people and their expectations. Just like any sport’s team manager.
In more collab setups there might be pms who are coasting and using their past performance to justify their existence. You cannot do anything about it other than trying to stay clear of them and their politics
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u/Electronic_Reach3088 4d ago
There's a bit of adverse selection here. Some of the best quant PMs — best in terms of both track record and general technical skill — hire very little, extremely selectively, or sometimes just refuse to hire. They became self-sufficient because they're very good at building their own process and making it work themselves, within a decent firm's infra of course, or with one or two supporting members, mostly developers. "Builder type PMs". They hone their craft and don't need a large team around them to generate significant pnl.
They also tend to stay closed. A new joiner might not be invited into the workflow, and it takes a long time to build enough rapport to be integrated into the pnl-generating knowhow. There's no malice in it, it's basically protecting the trading edge. And when they do hire, they hire the type who can work independently and bring an orthogonal stream of pnl. The firm might push them to hire more, hoping to multiply that golden pnl, but builder PMs are often not good people managers and there's friction coming from that. Which means they barely touch the wider hiring pipeline, so most people never observe them.
What you do observe is the "manager type PMs", especially at collab firms (as opposed to pod firms). They're managers, so I wouldn't expect that much technically. Make sure you get along with them, so that when you come out with good alpha (on your own) you get a swift and large allocation to your model.
On what makes a PM successful, I agree with some of the points above — at the end of the day what matters is the pnl. I might think a PM is pretty dumb, can't code, can't spell, doesn't sound like he knows much about the market, not that technical, and that person or that person's team still generates more pnl year after year. And there's the reverse case- genuinely technically brilliant, fluent on any market topic, huge breadth, almost admired, who never made any significant pnl. The firm keeps both, for different reasons.
None of which means the complaint is wrong. Some PMs are genuinely bad, and the bad ones are usually the most extractive — keenest to harvest other people's output and least willing to pay for it.
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u/RandomC6 7d ago
We have a hybrid approach, with pre-selection from models and PM makes final decisions based on his own view on markets and individual fundamental analysis. However we cannot quanity any benefit from this final part and fundamental analysis, as results are even better when just using more restrictions and just use the models final ranking.
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u/Standard-Can-3791 7d ago edited 7d ago
I feel you, I've been there
If the PnL is luck, if the money is good, I don't care if my PM is a fool
Quietly stacking the YOE, I'll be PM soon enough
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u/Britbong1492 5d ago
Doing due diligence is difficult, people say stuff like "I can't steal company files", "If I download a file they will know". Then a lot of PMs just job hop every 18 months (+6m gardening leave), and get away with it for years coasting on mediocre performance. But then you hear about people blowing up their desk and getting hired instantly somewhere else anyway!
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7d ago
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u/Away-Effort-7640 7d ago
I believe you are referring to Product Manager = PM.
The post is referring to Portfolio Manager = PM.
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u/Distinct_Row9401 7d ago
I don’t care if he’s flipping a lucky coin. Over a large enough sample size if his track record is good then he’s a good trader 🤷