Disappeared fund managers: some are wise to protect themselves, some get rid of the "bad market", and some choose to have a baby

In the past year, the financial circle seems to have set off a "disappearance tide" of fund managers, some of whom have stepped down, such as the "goddess of medicine" Gülen, some have resigned, such as Cai Songsong, the "first brother of chips", and some have disappeared from public offerings and switched to private placements...... Wind data also shows that out of 197 related companies, more than 350 fund managers left during the year, the highest number in the same period in the past five years.

Now, for those fund practitioners at the center of the storm, "no matter who leaves, it's no surprise". At one time, fund managers were once a glittering profession, and the outside world circulated their myths of wealth creation. But this group of people who are closest to money invariably choose to lie dormant or disappear. And what has disappeared along with the trust and money of thousands of people.

Now, everyone is looking forward to spring.

Text | Wang Xiao

Edit | Yi Fangxing

Operations | orange

The Vanished Man

A sister from the fund next door was pregnant, and it was six months old when she announced it.

Hearing this news, Dai Ting, who is a public fund in Hong Kong (open to all investors, with no limit on the subscription amount), was very surprised. She originally thought that the sister in her forties would choose Dink, because the other party is "capable and has a big plate", and childbirth "has a great impact on her career" - this is also a consensus in the circle. But at the beginning of 2023, as soon as the company's front foot announced the year-end bonus, my sister announced that she was pregnant.

Dai Ting heard that after the other party got the bonus, she took half a year's maternity leave directly, "I don't seem to care very much about my own plate, and I don't care about whether I can come back."

The "disappearance" of this sister is not an isolated case. Around Dai Ting, there are still many people who choose to "disappear" by transferring posts. Once, the leader called Dai Ting to the office, "There are a few disks to be vacated recently, do you think you are interested?" Dai Ting glanced at the several disks pushed by the leader, all of which were projects that were in charge of the colleagues around her, but they all decided to withdraw from the fund manager position and retire to the middle and back office to be responsible for data, contract processing and other work.

A more common way to "disappear" is to optimize people.

Among Dai Ting's classmates in the financial circle, 60% will leave their jobs in 2023. Once, she had dinner with a friend who is also a fund manager, and her friend received a call from HR asking "when will you resign", and the friend realized that the entire fund he was in was gone. There are more than 40 fund managers, researchers, secretaries, etc. in the team, all of whom have to resign, and the HR who called complained that "I have to do my resignation by the way."

▲ Photo / Visual China

In the minds of the public, the news of the departure of fund managers may have started with the change of the "top stream" of the industry. In September 2023, CEIBS Medical's Gülen stepped down from two funds due to "company arrangement", which sparked heated discussions among the people.

In fact, since the beginning of the year, there have been news of career changes among star fund managers, first of all, Feng Mingyuan, the manager of Cinda Australasia Fund codenamed "Technology Hunter", has stepped down from 6 funds one after another, leaving only 4 in his hands. Subsequently, on September 29, Cai Songsong, the manager of Sino Analytica, stepped down from all products, and the official announcement was issued that Cai Songsong resigned.

In 2023, more and more fund managers are leaving. Wind data shows that as of December 27, among the 197 companies, including brokerage asset management and fund companies, 357 fund managers have left their posts in 2023. Although this is only a small fraction of the total number of fund managers, it is the highest number of departures compared to the same period in the past five years.

According to Bread Finance, compared with the end of November last year, the number of fund managers of 12 fund companies such as IB Fund and Changsheng Fund will shrink year-on-year in 2023, and the overall fund companies will be dominated by small and medium-sized fund companies. In the first half of the year alone, five fund managers left Rongtong Fund.

Not only public funds, but also private funds (for a small number of investment customers, with an investment amount of not less than 1 million) are not optimistic. Li Yuqi is a partner of Shanghai Peibang Private Equity, and in October 2023, he went to Shanghai to conduct research and visit other fund institutions. There is a top institution that has begun to optimize in large numbers, and there is a partner of a private equity company who also "can't make money and plans to switch jobs to state-owned enterprises".

In 2023 alone, there will be as many as 2,344 private placements that will be cancelled and shut down, some of which are forced to be cancelled in accordance with industry regulations, but more are poorly managed and bankrupt. According to the data of the private placement network, as of December 27, there were 9,755 equity strategy private placement products that updated their performance, of which 57.42% of the products that lost money in the past year. The companies are all closed, and "the fund manager is definitely gone".

In this industry, the "disappearance" of the fund manager in the front office will lead to the "disappearance" of the middle and back office practitioners.

Zhang Jun, who has been in the industry for nearly nine years, is a fund product manager. In March 2023, the leader suddenly called him to the office and announced that he was "optimized", and Zhang Jun was instantly stunned in place, "I never thought it would be optimized". Judging from Zhang Jun's observation for many years in the industry: the financial industry is very face-saving. Therefore, it is rare to hear of any organization that directly optimizes, "generally transferring posts and forcing employees to go by themselves".

Zhang Jun only jumped to this foreign company at the end of last year, and he had rich experience before that, and the salary he negotiated was relatively high. Zhang Jun initially thought it was really his own problem, but after half a month of inquiring with his colleagues, he learned that the leader did not recruit new people at all, and the department was reduced.

"The post was simply closed. Zhang Jun said. The work he was originally responsible for was broken into several pieces and spread evenly on the heads of other colleagues, "working overtime every day".

▲ Photo / Visual China

When the wind rises

In the shining era, countless fund managers who stepped on the wind jumped up and weaved a brilliant record.

As early as 2014, when Dai Ting was still in high school, she was inspired by the "legendary story" - a senior sister of the school worked for two years and bought a suite in her hometown of Nanjing, and another teacher's classmates earned millions of dollars a year, and they all came from the same major - finance.

Since then, the equation of "learning Xi finance = financial freedom" has been planted in Dai Ting's heart, and after the college entrance examination, the admissions offices of Peking University and Tsinghua University have gone to her home to send olive branches, and finally, she went to Hong Kong to study for an undergraduate.

After entering college, she changed to a way of rolling. Every week, Dai Ting forces herself to meet 3 financial practitioners and ask them about their career experience, the most basic way is to meet the seniors and seniors of the same school, in addition, she will add friends and chat on LinkedIn one by one.

Before 2021, the story of wealth creation in the financial circle has never been interrupted in Dai Ting's ears, today a fund manager senior operated a wave of gods, and the year-end bonus was divided into tens of millions, and tomorrow an alumnus's startup company went public, and he was financially free.

It was a time when star fund managers took off.

Also before 2021, whether it was the A-share Shanghai Composite Index or the Hong Kong stock Hang Seng Index, on the chart, they were all volatile, and the Shanghai Composite Index rose by nearly 11% on the highest day.

At that time, stepping on one industry outlet after another, coupled with the blessing of social media, "it is very imaginable to become a star fund manager". In 2020, the rapid rise of the liquor sector led to the fire of E Fund fund manager Zhang Kun, who became a star fund manager with his heavy position in liquor, and the E Fund Blue Chip Select under his control even rose 5.05% in one day. Jimin called him the "God of War of Liquor", and some people even set up a global fan support club on Weibo for him and opened Weibo Chaohua.

These two years were also the period when top fund manager Gülen took off. In 2020, the largest fund managed by Gülen, the Sino-European Medical and Health Mix, was less than 6 billion, but in 2021, the fund has increased by 6 times, with a scale of more than 40 billion, and the total scale under her management has snowballed to 110.339 billion yuan. Gülen's code name in the people and the media has thus become the "goddess of medicine".

Gülen prefers the CXO track. CXO refers to the outsourcing of pharmaceutical R&D, production and sales. Over the past few years, CXO has been the fastest-growing segment of the pharmaceutical industry. Because of the country's encouragement of innovative drugs and the transfer of the R&D links of global pharmaceutical giants to China, there have been many doubling bull stocks in the track. In 2020, the research and development of new crown vaccines has led to a significant increase in CXO demand, and this sector has taken off directly. At that time, the biomedical industry almost "went public every 3.75 days".

▲ Photo / Visual China

For some "non-professional players", there were also opportunities in those two years, Yao Zhongzhen, a partner at Dagang Investment, who wanted to change careers to become a private equity fund manager since 2016, and before that, he had been working at a brokerage firm (securities company), responsible for providing investment advice to clients.

Without industry resources, he can only run a Weibo account and accumulate fans, while "finding some part-time jobs to support his family". He will share his views on stock speculation on Weibo every day, and occasionally a few big Vs will forward it, and the number of fans will also begin to rise, and in 2020, there will be a period of time when every time he posts on Weibo, he will "respond to a hundred calls", and almost all big Vs in the financial field have forwarded his views.

A partner threw an olive branch. At the end of 2020, Yao Zhongzhen finally released his first fund, and the number of followers on his Weibo exceeded 500,000. Many fans have found him to invest one after another, and by 2021, the scale of Yao Zhongzhen's management will reach 50 million.

At that time, one of the sectors he was optimistic about was energy storage. The "3060" strategy, which is a national strategy, aims to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. To achieve it, the country has planned a huge new energy development layout, and energy storage technology is a key step to solve the instability of new energy.

Yao Zhongzhen took a lot of energy storage stocks, and in just three months from April to July 2021, he paid investors 17 points (equivalent to 17%) in dividends.

Zhang Jun also remembers those glory days, when his daily work was to constantly release products and prepare for the bull market. Explosive funds should at least "start with 10 billion", and in 2020, "several can even raise 100 billion", and a product is online, "you can sell it as you like".

But becoming a fund manager is hard because the industry is too competitive. Many of Zhang Jun's classmates, in order to be fund managers, from researchers to assistants, to fund managers, must not make mistakes in every step, and becoming fund managers "has already surpassed more than 90% of people, and it takes a lot of work".

Yao Zhongzhen also wrote a book called "The Tenacity of Investment - Let the Law Bloom in Value", which specifically talked about his experience of repeated rejection before starting a business, "Even if you start from the grassroots level, you promise a trial job but no money, no one wants it."

But at that time, the outstanding talents still broke their heads and wanted to enter this industry flowing with milk and honey.

Almost all fund managers have an extremely glamorous resume. According to Wind statistics, 96% of the 3,460 fund managers with a management scale of nearly 27 trillion yuan have a master's degree or above. Brokerage China reporters combed through the public fund manager profiles and found that the number of fund managers with academic backgrounds from Peking University, Tsinghua University and Fudan University exceeded 100.

With the blessing of high education, Jimin is also superstitious about star fund managers. 35-year-old Zhao Ying has been with Gülen for more than a year, just because she took a fancy to her status as a medical doctor, Gülen studied at Tsinghua University as an undergraduate, and later went to the United States to study for a doctorate in biomedical engineering. "The medical profession must have a better understanding of medical treatment."

And Zhang Jun is looking for Zhang Feng, the star fund manager of Wells Fargo Fund. At that time, he was very firm in his choice, no matter how he adjusted his position, he would follow the investment, "they must be better than me."

▲ Photo / Visual China

The beginning of the cold wave

I was thinking of "making a big difference", but the situation began to be wrong, and there seemed to be a chill in the warm wind.

In the second half of 2021, with Dai Ting's efforts, she was promoted to fund manager in just one year after graduating from her bachelor's degree. But after the promotion, the atmosphere of the company began to become depressing, and the colleagues in charge of the main investment in the mainland seemed to be forever covered with a layer of gloom, "always sighing".

Every day, the first thing Dai Ting does is to look at the stock market trend, but whether it is A shares or Hong Kong stocks, it seems that "I can't stop the car, all the way down". The decline of A-shares can be slower a little, and many foreign investors used to invest in Hong Kong stocks, but after foreign investors sold them, they fell from nearly 30,000 points in March 2021 to 17,000 points in October 2022.

At that time, Dai Ting's style of play was "guerrilla warfare", and the primary purpose was to avoid the uncertain city. Every day, she has to keep an eye on the number of confirmed cases in each city, and then speculate whether there will be changes in the city, and then study what large factories are in the city, which industries will be affected, and if the signs are wrong, she will quickly reduce her holdings.

Every day, Dai Ting watched the news, quickly reported to the boss, and then "analyzed a wave, voted a wave, withdrew a wave, and finally sighed again", and the cycle repeated. Later, the "guerrilla warfare" method of playing was not easy to use, so we had to wait for the blockade to be lifted.

At that time, the people were not immune. Zhao Ying found that since the second half of 2021, CEIBS Medical has begun to lose money, "as if it has been falling", and all the money she made from buying CEIBS Medical has fallen. Affected by the internal and external environment such as centralized procurement of pharmaceuticals, the pharmaceutical sector has fallen significantly. Wind data shows that the top 10 healthcare stocks in China and Europe all fell sharply in the second half of 2021, with the top five holdings falling by more than 30%.

During that time, many people bought the fund managed by Gülen through the recommendation of the distribution platform "Alipay Jinxuan", and when the fund they held suffered a big loss, Jimin was not only dissatisfied with Gülen, but also began to complain about Alipay. Later, in the "weekly sales list" of Alipay Fund, Gülen's fund disappeared directly.

Zhao Ying also began to retreat, "I won't follow Gülen in the future." As of February 2022, CEIBS Healthcare A has retraced more than 40% from its previous high. In her heart, Gülen started with her "incomprehensible operation", and stepped down from the altar step by step. For example, at the end of 2020, Gülen released a fund called "CEIBS Alpha", which was different from the old pharmaceutical industry she had focused on in the past, with a heavy position in liquor, adding brands such as Kweichow Moutai, Shanxi Fenjiu, and Luzhou Laojiao, but at that time "liquor was already very hot".

And judging from the chart of these stocks, it is not optimistic. Since the end of 2020, liquor has been declining, and Gülen "bought it at the top".

▲ Photo / Visual China

"No purchase limit" is also one of the operations that Zhao Ying can't understand. When the fund size grows too fast and too large, in order to protect the interests of fund holders, many fund managers will choose to limit purchases. On January 28, the purchase limit of E Fund's blue-chip select mix managed by Zhang Kun was reduced from the original 100,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan. But Gülen has "no purchase restrictions".

In this industry, the salary of public fund managers is not linked to performance, but to the scale of management, and fund companies charge 1.5% of the management fee, "the bigger the plate, the more management fees". As a star fund manager, because "they can bring money themselves", they will get more shares.

This is also where many people feel unhappy - the fund loses, but the fund manager can still earn management fees.

Even media person Hu Xijin recently complained that the fund he bought "fell very badly". At the Sina Finance 2023 Annual Conference and the 16th Golden Kylin Forum held on December 21, he said: "The income of the manager (of my three funds) should fall with me...... They should share our weal and sorrow with us. ”

But outside of star fund managers, ordinary fund managers have much less share. For example, Dai Ting, she described her state as a "big pot of rice", the people invested money to see their company's reputation, and the company took the majority of the management fee, "not as many waiters in Hong Kong as in terms of salary alone".

For the average fund manager, bonuses are important in addition to salary, but they are also linked to performance. If the company makes less money, there will be less bonuses to be shared at the end of the year, so everyone is looking forward to a bull market. Last year, there were many public fund managers who turned to private equity funds in order to seek higher returns.

Li Yuqi remembers that in 2022, a well-resourced public fund manager transferred to private placement, although the market was not good at that time, but for many public fund managers, running at a low point "may be a turning point". Because, private equity fund managers can receive a 20% performance commission, and as long as there is a bull market, they will earn more.

But the expected bull market did not materialize. Li Yuqi remembered that many people came here and invested a lot of money, and the fund manager did not wait for the bull market or run the market, and after the loss, "everyone didn't look for him much".

In a sense, the fund manager also "passively disappeared".

▲ Photo / Visual China

The Spring of Bitter Wait

Everyone has also worked hard to be excited.

Dai Ting remembers that at the end of 2022, the atmosphere of the company was reinvigorated, and everyone was excited to wait for the rapid recovery of the economy after the policy liberalization, and colleagues "had to laugh badly". Jimin is also very confident, and throws money into her plate, the total scale of her management is more than 3 billion, and nearly 10 points of money will pour in every day, at that time, Dai Ting was crazy every day "buy, buy, buy".

When I see everything, I feel that it is going to rise sharply: I haven't traveled for so long, it's time to travel, "I'm an airline", and the hotel is also coming with a wave; "The car is old and it's time to change the car", and then there is a wave of electric cars; "If you are not married, you should get married, you want to buy a house", and then there is a wave of real estate.

The market was hot and things were expensive. Even though some stock prices have been pushed very high, and some have risen to 10%, Dai Ting dare not follow, "what if it rises to 20% again." At that time, their analysis was that even if prices would fall after a while for the market to calm down, "the gradual recovery of economic activity would hold."

As a result, it has just risen for two months, and the trend of Hong Kong stocks has been downward since February, and since then, Dai Ting doesn't remember how many times she has fallen, but she remembers that she has to sigh from the bottom of her heart every once in a while, "how can it still fall".

I remember that in July 2023, she once had a meeting while staring at the industry situation that had just come out, and a string of numbers popped out, and Dai Ting sighed in her heart, "It's over, it's going to collapse."

The group next door mainly voted for the mainland, and the reaction of colleagues was stronger, repeatedly sighing "what should I do if the numbers are like this".

After that, Dai Ting watched the "disappearance tide" of fund managers coming. Later, disappearing is no longer a novelty.

But for many fund managers, whether it is "actively disappearing" or "passively disappearing", it is not a long-term solution, and many still have to start looking for jobs again.

It's easy to disappear and hard to come back. Dai Ting's optimized friend initially thought that he would be able to find a job within three months, but after looking for more than half a year, he found a new opportunity. In 2022, he invested in eight institutions at that time, and four of them replied, but in 2023, almost all institutions have been invested, and all of them have been lost. He went to ask the headhunters: either he has no recruitment plan, or he wants to find a younger one, "without so much salary".

And with the "disappearance" of fund managers, people's money and confidence also disappear.

Now, Zhang Jun has begun to give up a little, he thinks, "It's better to invest and make some money by yourself." In the past, he was superstitious about star fund managers and had lost more than 200,000 yuan, but now he feels that "no matter how capable a fund manager is, he can't beat the general trend." Since last week, he has been learning Xi investment and financial management at home 996 every day, "doing good research" and doing it himself.

Zhao Ying also decided to give up co-investment fund managers. Today, she only has 60,000 or 70,000 yuan left in the fund, "rarely opens it to see", and began to switch to the market to operate ETFs (exchange-traded funds).

There are more people who sigh "miserable" on social platforms - some people don't open the software for a long time to see, "it's a loss anyway, it's useless to look at it", and occasionally open it once, directly "losing 35%"; some people have worked for many years and are reluctant to buy a bag of 80,000 yuan, but "the fund has lost 80,000 yuan"; some people bought Gülen's CEIBS Medical at the high point in 2021, and have been losing until now, thinking that they can return to their original cost when they just lost 5%, and "they can't sell it because of the pain when they lose 20%", and now, they have lost nearly 60% directly.

But this "vanishing tide" is not all negative. There are also many fund managers who choose to stick to it and find some opportunities.

In this market, fund manager Li Yuqi has been making money, he mainly does quantitative private equity, and uses computers to help him screen out suitable stocks. At the end of 2021, he added the CTA (commodity trading advisor) strategy to the fund product, which is to make a profit through volatility, that is, whether A shares rise or fall, as long as they fluctuate violently, they can make a profit.

To this end, Li Yuqi conceded the entire stock strategy sector, and the energy of their entire company's investment research department was rarely spent on stock selection, and almost all of them were put on the analysis of CTA strategies.

At the end of last year, he opened a homestay in Chongqing's Erling No. 2 Factory Cultural and Creative Park, but after taking over, he found that there was no passenger flow at all, and for a while the property encouraged them to go out and set up stalls, they set up stalls to sell ice powder and cold shrimp, "no one bought a bowl for five yuan". Today, the B&B has lost more than a million. This B&B has become a vane for Li Yuqi to judge the economic trend, "When the B&B makes money, when the economy will be good."

Yao Zhongzhen, a private equity fund manager, has always insisted on choosing stocks by himself, and he will still make a little money in 2023, but it is indeed quite difficult. He follows a steady style, and before each stock selection, he will first pick the blue ocean industry, then focus on analyzing the leading stocks and growth stocks in the industry, carefully compare the valuations of previous years, and then carefully select a "low valuation" portfolio. Before actually buying, you have to ask yourself: if the stock market is closed for three years after buying, do I dare to choose? Only when he gets an affirmative answer will he buy firmly, so he hardly converts shares.

In order not to lose too badly, he also asked himself to buy from unsatisfactory positions, leave a small amount of money for each operation, and make up the position at any time if it falls. With the blessing of this protection mechanism, he has struggled to outperform the market for nearly 70% of the time in 2023.

In this year, as a private equity fund manager, he also feels more pressured because investors are anxious. Every once in a while, some investors sent a long essay analyzing the current industry situation and questioning his operation. For example, in 2023, there is an investor who happened to invest in after the dividend, and there has been no dividend after the investment, and in the past three months, the other party has sent two small essays of several hundred words, and he asked politely at first, but later it became an ultimatum, "one year, if you don't pay dividends, you will withdraw it".

In the same industry, on the side of public funds, there are similarities. Dai Ting's friend called a while ago to complain: The newly found company may also be optimized, and it has withdrawn every day after joining the company, and two funds have been closed. Originally, the trend rose, more funds poured in, more investment opportunities and choices, and the larger the scale, the more funds continued to pour in. Now this flywheel seems to be reversed, the trend is falling, everyone is deeper, once it rises, a large number of people immediately redeem it, "dare not put the money in the fund".

When Dai Ting first received the plate from her colleague, she looked at it as a "bad plate", but she didn't want it in her heart, some of them were high-interest bonds in real estate, and "I don't feel like I can afford it at all". For a fund manager, the performance of the funds she has managed will be written into her professional resume, but the performance of these bad markets is difficult to look at.

But Dai Ting didn't dare to refuse, no matter if the market was good or bad, the scale in his hands was large, "the company would not easily optimize itself".

What is laughable is that last month, Dai Ting went to do a nail art, and the nail technician scolded their fund for half an hour, and then the conversation changed and asked about Dai Ting's work, she didn't dare to say that she was a fund manager, hesitated for a while, and replied:

"Sitting in the office. ”

▲ Photo / Visual China

(Except for Li Yuqi and Yao Zhongzhen, the interviewees are pseudonyms)

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