Job Description

About the Company

Bridgewater & Investment Engine Department Overview

Bridgewater manages global investments for a wide array of institutional clients, including foreign governments and central banks, corporate and public pension funds, university endowments and charitable foundations. As a firm, our business objective is to have the deepest possible understanding of global financial markets and translate that understanding into 1) high, consistent, diversifying returns and 2) strategic, impactful relationships with our clients. Our core mission as an organization is to understand the fundamental drivers of markets and turn that understanding into high-quality portfolios and investment advice for our clients. We do this in three critical ways: by being fundamental, systematic, and diversified. We seek to understand the economy in a fundamental way, uncovering the timeless and universal cause-and-effect linkages that drive global markets. That understanding is implemented systematically and converted into explicit rules that can be rigorously stress-tested. Finally, we create highly diversified portfolios that are not dependent on any one source of return and can survive a wide range of economic environments.

Role Overview

Investment Associates are on a mission to understand the fundamental drivers of markets and turn that understanding into quantitative trading strategies and qualitative investment advice for our clients. There are no typical paths at Bridgewater. We operate as a meritocracy, where you will be assessed on the quality of your ideas and given as much responsibility as you can handle. Some Investment Associates develop into specialized subject matter experts, while others excel as generalists. Many rotate between roles over the course of their careers. All Investment Associates participate in a six-month class where you will receive a world-class education in macroeconomics and learn about Bridgewater’s unique approach to thinking about markets. In this position, the Investment Associate will be responsible for playing a fundamental role in performing investment analysis and market / economic research across four departments, and rotating between these departments throughout his tenure. The Investment Associate will be responsible for the following in the specified departments:

• Research: Deepening Bridgewater's fundamental understanding of global markets, and translating this understanding into trading strategies;

• Trading or Account Management: Analyzing trading strategies and helping devise methods to trade more invisibly and with lower costs;

• Client Service: Taking on various projects that allow a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between our ideas, our business, our clients, and our industry.
  

Roles & Responsibilities:

The Investment Associate will specifically be responsible for:

• Using statistical techniques, analyze the exposures and risks of Bridgewater’s portfolio to help Bridgewater manage its risk and apply risk controls in order to best balance return and risk while avoiding unacceptable outcomes;

• Contribute to Bridgewater’s trade execution strategies, using mathematical techniques to analyze Bridgewater’s trade execution in order to design new approaches that best reduce transaction costs while executing desired market transactions as quickly as possible.

• Apply mathematical skills to develop new analytics for research reports (Bridgewater Daily Observations, as well as in response to client requests) that are sent to Bridgewater’s clients to help them best navigate today’s markets and economic conditions. Provide research to support various client communications, including quarterly and year-end reviews / outlooks;

• Lead analytical projects, ranging from hours to years in duration, which help Bridgewater Associates, deepen its fundamental understanding of markets. These projects directly influence our market views and how we express them via day-to-day trading; and

• Provide CIOs coverage analysis of key market events and trends via written documents and discussions.
  

Skills & Competencies

• Bachelors or Master’s degree in Mathematics, Economics, or related

• Three years professional experience in the financial services industry as an investment analyst, investment researcher, or similar role

• In-depth understanding of key macro-economic concepts, portfolio construction & investment management principles

• Ability to solve complex problems through financial modeling, analysis or creative quantitative work involving financial and economic data

• Ability to apply probability and statistics, financial theories, and computational skills to understand complex mathematical and statistical research

• Effective written and oral communication skills