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Do you mean you earn less than peers at citadel who are doing quant? Or fundamental?
I’m someone who set out to be a quant but ended up switching to fundamental investing this year. Worked as a risk quant (only required stats/programming) before deciding to apply to MFE to up my math background; then decided that 1) the bar is higher for quant than fundamental investors; and 2) quant models didn’t do very well in tail events like COVID.
I switched to real assets PE and am now in later stages with one of the top HFs for a L/S equity role. So my anecdote is that you could skip formal fundamental work experience and still get an investment seat if you can craft a pitch. Can’t skip MS PhD if you want a quant seat. And the upside is unlimited at both, so why spend time and $ on higher ed? I also think direct market exposure is more useful than academia.
I am not saying the bar is low. Getting into Citadel/millenium/P72 is hard. But they are more open to those with investment ideas even without the “right background.” I never did ER/banking but I can build models and generate ideas. I was also self taught in machine learning and can build those models but always got the feedback that quant funds strongly preferred MS/PhD candidates who know 3 programming languages. Higher ed could be right for others, but I don’t want to spend another 5 years being drowned in theories. At the end of the day, investors outperform on creativity and business acumen. You can hire others to build/implement technical models but you need ideas on what the models do.
Trading and algorithmic strats are very different, which are you looking at?
Yes, it is greener. WLB isn’t great (55 hrs/wk on average), but blows banking out of the water, and I have my weekends to myself. I considered banking in college but definitely made the right decision in hindsight. If you were USAMO level, you should have no problem getting interviews/offers from those trading shops (provided that you review concepts since you’ll probably be rusty). Happy to refer you if you pm me.