How the teenage son of a top macro portfolio manager is already preparing to get a job
Working as a macro portfolio manager is one of the most interesting jobs in financial services. So says Ray Dalio, who founded the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates and who has taken to expounding on what makes macro investing great on his Substack. Being a macro investor allows you "to bet on practically anything and make money in any type of environment," Dalio enthuses.
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Becoming a macro investor is not easy, though. You might start as a rates trader in a bank. You might start as a trainee at a hedge fund. In either case, you might have a 1% or less chance of success.
You will therefore need to differentiate yourself.
Ranbeer Arora, the teenage son of Zameer Arora, a macro portfolio manager (PM) at Capula Investment Management in New York, and former PM at BlueCrest is showing how this differentiation occurs. Aged 16, Ranbeer has his own Substack on AI insights and policy. His latest post, on taxation and fiscal frameworks in the age of AI, argues that governments need to tax corporate token consumption at a rising marginal rate while allowing individuals to use tokens tax free. "The tax falls on firms that run trillions of tokens to replace labor, not on students using AI as a study aid," writes Ranbeer. In a well-sourced and researched article, he suggests that the money raised should to to supporting and retraining AI-displaced human beings.
All of this sounds eminently sensible and impressive from a high school student. It's not clear, whether Ranbeer, who studies at an independent school in Manhattan, plans to go into financial services himself. He hasn't even studied for a degree yet. He has, however, already completed a brief internship at Karya Capital Management in New York.
It's not unheard of for the scions of macro fund managers to follow their parent into the industry. Mike Platt's son Marcus works for him at BlueCrest, for example. Izzy Englander's son Marc Englander is a portfolio manager at Millennium in New York.
If your parent isn't in hedge funds, you can still learn from Ranbeer's father's statements about what it takes to become a macro pm. "There is no "holy grail" - there is tremendous diversity in the academic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and in the paths these traders have taken," Zameer wrote on LinkedIn recently. "Don't be too outcome-based in choosing what you want to study. Instead, focus on the fields that excite you, go deep in them, and push the boundaries of your learning," he added.
Once you've done this, you might want to start a Substack of your own. Even if you're only 16, it will probably help when you eventually come to apply.
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