This hasn't been lost on PMs, who are professionally attuned to shifts in the way the market values various assets, and they have been using their leverage to great advantage. The PM's higher profile has been accompanied by greater responsibilities, however. Increased media scrutiny on the way up almost always means a painful spotlight will be trained on anyone whose performance sours, for whatever reason. Today's genius investor is often just a sector rotation away from being tomorrow's chump. This intensifies the pressure to perform.
Stardom has other burdens as well.
It requires setting aside a certain amount of time for interacting with the media, and it mandates that in those encounters the PM be capable of fully articulating his or her investment style and approach. Being uninteresting is the first step on the road to media oblivion. On a contrarian note, Lieberman suggests that in spite of all the publicity attendant to the most highly comped PMs, average portfolio managers are actually earning proportionately less than they earned in the past. This can result in some odd inequities, with a stand-alone fund company portfolio manager perhaps earning five or 10 times what an insurance company PM earns. That sort of extreme is not likely to persist in today's more fluid hiring environment, however, as the more successful managers will quickly gravitate towards higher paying opportunities.