Hedge Fund Hours (50-70 Hour Work Weeks)

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Overview

A job at a hedge fund is extremely demanding and stressful. Unlike advisory roles in the sell-side like investment banking or equity research, your work contributes to real investments where performance is tracked daily.

This post will outline the typical day for an investment analyst at a multi-manager fund. On average, the hours are not as grueling as those typical of investment banking, but you'll still be working a lot. Hours are more similar to what you can expect in private equity, and similarly, you'll be working less hours for more money relative to other jobs in finance.

On average, an analyst in a multi-manager can work 50-70 hours a week. These hours fluctuate highly with earnings season and travel requirements. We'll outline what a typical day can look below.

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Typical Work Day at a Hedge Fund

Most analysts try to work at least 12 hours a day. There are always outliers, but it's reasonable to get in to the office around 7AM and leave by 7PM on a non-earnings work day. Some people also aim to leave by 5PM and put in a few hours from home.

On a non-earnings day, the first thing analysts do is scan the news flow to see if anything may impact their coverage universe.

Understanding what is relevant to track for your role can take a while. You not only have to track the companies you directly cover, but understand how news in other industries outside of your direct coverage can impact the performance of stocks you cover.

Missing read-throughs is one of the most common pitfalls for new analysts. For example, Meta announcing an increase in AI-related capex can influence a stock like Broadcom which would provide semiconductors needed to build out the infrastructure.

Corporate press releases typically hit at the top of the hour, meaning you'll be scanning for relevant pieces of news at 7AM, 8AM, and so on.

Between 9AM and 12PM, you'll spend time listening to calls and learning about your industry. These can be calls with the sell-side (equity research) or with people with expertise in your coverage universe (in calls moderated by the sell-side) to get some incremental information.

You'll also be monitoring your positions when the market opens at 9:30AM ET. This means watching live trading activity and seeing price reactions to news and market commentary from the sell-side.

By the afternoon, you'll start working on your actual tasks. This can include:

Model Maintenance: Models need frequent updates to include data from channel checks, new macro-level inputs, or other estimates that impact earnings such as a new outlook on commodity prices or other input costs.

A model excerpt from the Peak Frameworks Hedge Fund Course

Idea Generation: PMs expect a relatively constant stream of new ideas from their team. Not only will you have to suggest what trades to take the team should take on, but how those trades should be funded if your book is fully deployed.

For example, if you suggest your team build a position in Lyft, what stock should you sell to free up the capital? You need to provide both sides of a trade assuming your team aims to fully deploy its capital.

Model Builds and Initiations: When your PM expresses interest in a new name, you'll be responsible for quickly learning about the company and putting together a working model. This is analogous to the type of work an equity research analyst might do for an initiation, though the focus is more on information that can justify taking a position quickly and less on writing reports that often act as educational material (investors often use equity research for this purpose).

After the market close (4PM to 7PM), you'll focus on providing a recap of what happened in the day and the P&L impact of your positions, prep for the following day, and continue on your work in these quieter hours of the day.

Weekends

You'll probably have Saturday off to rest and recover, though some teams are expected to work seven days a week.

More typically, you'll spend probably work another 10-12 hours on Sunday since you'll have an opportunity to do uninterrupted deep work without the distractions of emails and press releases. More routine tasks on Sundays could include:

Weekly previews: You'll draft an email or short report highlighting the coming week. This could include outlining which important catalysts or earnings reports will happen in the week, flag potential read-through events, and identify where your estimates sit relative to sell-side consensus numbers and buy-side bogeys.

Bogeys are essentially estimates on a company's performance that reflect what the buy-side (other hedge funds or money managers) believes as opposed to the published estimates from the sell-side. It's the real expectation of the market.

Equity research analysts often try to differentiate themselves and make bold calls which may not always reflect true market expectations particularly as they do not have skin in the game. It makes sense that stocks move based on company performance relative to expectations from those who actually own and trade the stocks.

Since the buy-side doesn't publish their estimates in the same way the sell-side does, bogeys are gathered by surveys often conducted by a bank's Sector Specialist in the research department (also called spec sales).

Team calls: Most teams have standing weekly calls which usually happen in the afternoon/evening on Sundays. This is where the PM would run through the team's current book, highlight upcoming catalysts, and discuss trade ideas.

Earnings

Earnings days are high-pressure and generally process-driven. Your actual schedule will depend on how many companies you have reporting that day, what other other companies outside of your coverage are reporting (for read throughs), and which names you'll follow less closely.

Pre-earnings, you'll want to understand what the bogey is relative to sell-side consensus to know what numbers to focus on when a print hits. You'll discuss risk positioning with your PM and decide whether to size up, trim, or hedge the team's exposure going into the print.

During the earnings release (typically after 4:00PM when the market closes, or sometime before the market opens), you'll highlight the key metrics and compare them against bogey numbers within minutes. You'll update your team on the outcome (EPS missed/beat the bogey by X% which implies the stock will likely be down/up), and start updating the model quickly.

You'll dial into the earnings call for live note-taking to capture management commentary and find items to help refine your model.

Post-call either that day (or after you tend to other important earnings releases over the coming days), you'll have time to revisit your thesis and set up calls with equity research to get color on unique ways to interpret the print. It will then be up to the PM to decide whether to add to or cut the position based on their intuition and their team's recommendations.

Summary

The actual daily responsibilities of working at a hedge fund depend on news flow, earnings cycles, and market outcomes which creates for a uniquely stressful environment within jobs in finance. While the hours are long, the work offers an opportunity to directly impact P&L which can be reflected in the high potential total compensation. This can be a very rewarding career path for those who thrive under intense environments and enjoy the challenge of constant problem-solving.