I don’t think much has changed. Compensation might be a little different now, but ER is still not a great long-term career path due to MiFID II, falling numbers of boutiques, and lower fees paid for research. It’s still a decent starting option, but you normally want to move into a deal-based role or a buy-side role after spending a few years there.

I would be surprised if compensation increases substantially. It’s true that MiFID II has not been the end of the world, but the impacts on ER groups and firms has been uneven, with some growing and some shrinking. It’s probably less bad than initially feared, but still not a great industry outlook.

I think it will be extremely difficult to get into ER if you have a humanities PhD and you’ve worked in academia up until this point. PhDs in technical fields like physics, engineering, chemistry/biology, etc., can get in, but it’s much tougher to do that from a non-technical field. You might have better luck aiming for an investor relations role or something else where communication skills are valued more than technical/accounting/finance knowledge.

Sure, understood. I would not take all of these predictions of doom too seriously – everyone out there, including me, looks at recent history and then tries to project it forward. But things can always change, and industries have gone from positive to negative or the reverse fairly quickly. Just look at all the people who thought investment banking would “die” after the 2008-2009 period, or everyone who thought tech startups would “never come back” after the dot-com crash, etc.

If you like what you’re doing and don’t want to change paths, sure, continue on with it. And yes, multi-manager funds can be a good option as well if you like that style of trading. We did cover MM funds on this site once, but haven’t focused on it too much since I prefer long-term, fundamental analysis/investing.

I think buy-side research is somewhat safer because MiFID II does not directly affect firms in a negative way, and buy-side firms will always need people to do fundamental research. Yes, fee compression hurts, but that is just one headwind vs. multiple headwinds for equity research.

I would also say that credit research, especially in areas like high-yield or distressed, is probably safer than equity research because it’s tricky to evaluate those types of bonds, and fixed income has seen less automation / passive investing than equities (yes, there are lots of bond index funds and ETFs, but most are investment-grade).

For the record, I wasn’t trying to be critical of your view. It just feels like every discussion of roles in the public equities realm nowadays is very defeatist. As someone that missed the track for private investing (at least until an MBA at a minimum), it gets a bit heavy to read continuously that your career path is in decline. So I was just curious if there was anywhere that you still viewed positively.

I agree with both views on the LO seats, hard to get and not going anywhere. I would also say that if you don’t mind investing in a very short term, market neutral style, that the multi-manager opportunity set is still quite robust.