Main Responsibilities Of A Senior Investment Manager At An Asset Management Firm
As a senior investment manager on a four-person team managing a hedge fund focused on corporate bonds, Vasant's main responsibility is generating investment ideas by performing "deep dives" into company financials and market analysis. This involves assessing "what's a good company and what's a bad company," but more importantly discerning "what's a good investment and what's a bad investment," considering factors like valuation and market pricing to identify opportunities.
Financial Analysis, Investment Strategy, Portfolio Management, Equity Research, Debt Analysis
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
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Vasant Mehta
Senior Investment Manager
Global Investment Management Company
U.C. Berkeley
Johns Hopkins University : M.A. International Economics and European Studies
Political Science, American Studies
Finance (Banking, Fintech, Investing)
Finance
Honors Student
Video Highlights
1. The investment team's responsibilities include managing a hedge fund focused on fixed income and corporate bonds, requiring both long and short investment strategies.
2. A significant part of their role is conducting in-depth company analysis, involving reviewing financial reports, attending earnings calls, and engaging with industry experts (investment banks, etc.) to form investment opinions.
3. The team distinguishes between a 'good company' and a 'good investment,' emphasizing the importance of valuation in making investment decisions. They look for opportunities where market pricing differs significantly from their assessment of a company's true worth.
Transcript
What are your main responsibilities within your current role as a senior investment manager?
Sure. I think it's best to understand it within the context. We're a team of four people, four investment managers, and we sit within a larger asset management company.
The four of us manage a dedicated fund, which is a hedge fund strategy. This means we can go long, which is buying an instrument and owning it, as most people understand. Or we can also go short, meaning we borrow a security and sell it with the view that the price may go down.
We do both of these things and primarily focus on the fixed income asset class, specifically corporate bonds. These are debt instruments issued by companies, effectively acting as loans to the market.
There are four of us, and we all wear both the investment manager and analyst hats. Our focus is to come up with investment ideas and figure out where to park the capital investors have entrusted us with to generate a return.
To do this, we have to roll up our sleeves. We look at companies, analyze their financial reports, and determine their historical financial performance and current standing. More importantly, we assess where we think they are going forward.
This last part requires a lot of deep dives. We listen to company earnings calls, what peers are saying about the sector, and what other industry participants may be saying.
If you're on the asset management side, you speak to others on the sell side, like investment banks, to understand their views on the sector and specific companies. You try to piece all of this together.
We need to determine not only what's a good company and what's a bad company, but also what's a good investment and what's a bad investment, as they aren't always the same. A good company could be a terrible investment if the valuation is very high. Conversely, something that's not such a great company could be a fantastic investment if the price is heavily discounted in the market.
Tying it back together, our role is primarily to look at these companies and do the deep work to understand what's actually happening with them, where we think they're going, how that ties with the market price, and if there's an investment opportunity.