Asset managers decide which investments to own, sell, and mange over time–generally with the goal of balancing a return on that investment portfolio with a tolerable level of risk. An asset is anything of value that can be traded in a market or leveraged for cash. Traditional assets include cash and cash equivalents, equities (stocks), fixed income (bonds), and exchange traded funds. These assets are publicly available and traded in exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Examples of work in this category include:

• Public Market Investing: Managing investment portfolios consisting of publicly-traded securities including stocks, bonds, and index funds.
• Quantitative/Systematic Investing: Using algorithms, mathematical models, and statistical analysis to guide investment decisions.
• Wealth Management: Managing investment portfolios and advising on financial planning for individuals and families.
• Private Wealth Management: Wealth management for high-net-worth families and individuals.
• Institutional Client Solutions: Managing entire portfolios on behalf institutions like colleges, pension funds, endowments, and foundations.

One large sector of finance, investment banking, works across a number of function to serve institutional clients and even governments on raising capital and executing large, strategic financial transactions like mergers, acquisitions, and public offerings. Investment banks feature a diverse portfolio of work. While banks use different nomenclature, their work often falls into 5-7 different divisions:

• Investment Banking Division: Advising companies and governments on mergers & acquisitions and capital raising (equity and debt issuance). While names and structures differs across banks, generally work falls into two different groups:
  • Industry coverage groups who work closely with clients to build relationships and advise on strategies. Professionals here work to advise clients on strategy and transactions and originate deals including mergers, acquisitions, and financing. Sample groups include technology, healthcare, industrials, consumer, fig, real estate, energy, and technology/media/telecom.
  • Product groups who specialize on modeling and structuring the deals that originate in coverage groups. Professionals here run specific transactions, execute specific deal types, and model and structure deals. Common product groups include mergers & acquisitions, equity, leveraged finance, and restructuring. Two additional product groups, equity- and debt capital markets, help companies issue stocks or bonds and sell them to investors.
• Global Markets, or Sales & Trading: Executing trades that provide liquidity and help institutional clients buy/sell securities and manage market risk. Divisions here include teams focused on client relationships (sales), executing transactions (trading), building custom financial products (structuring), algorithmic trading (quant desks), and developing investment insights for clients and traders (research).
• Capital Markets:
• Investment Research: Producing company, sector, macro, and market analysis that supports investment decisions across both internal desks and external clients. This division can exist as a stand-alone, but researchers are also embedded in specific divisions.
• Treasury/Financing: Managing the bank’s own capital and liquidity instead of working directly with clients.

Some investment banks are large enough that they also provide asset management services to institutions and individuals.

Alternative assets (those that are generally less liquid, less regulated, and less common in public markets) include private equity ownership stakes in companies, hedge funds, private credit loans, real estate, commodities like gold and oil, and even collectibles like fine art. An array of financial sectors serve investors in this field. Many of these opportunities focus on the private markets–e.g. those that are not traded on public exchanges.

• Private Equity (PE): Investing in private companies (those that aren’t publicly-traded). Private equity investment can take different forms. Some companies may specialize in specific strategies, and others may be large enough to work across numerous approaches.
  • Buyout: Purchase majority stakes in a company to run them, improve them, and sell them to get a return on their investment.
  • Secondaries: Purchase preexisting ownership stakes, or interests, in private companies or private equity funds as an investment.
  • Growth equity: Purchase minority stakes in fast-growing companies that already have proven business models and revenue streams.
• Private Debt (including Private Credit): Lending to companies outside traditional channels like banks and public markets, typically in situations that are less regulated and less standardized than bank-issued loans and lines of credit–and often carrying higher risk, highly-negotiated terms, and more complex arrangements.
• Venture Capital (VC): Investing in early-stage and start-up companies with high-growth potential but emerging business models–often in exchange for equity or a role in actively managing it.
• Hedge Funds: Creating private investment funds that use advanced strategies to actively trade in the public and private markets, generally pursuing advanced investment strategies designed to generate outsized returns.
• Real Estate Investing: Investing in physical or long-duration assets like property, energy systems, utilities, and transport infrastructure.