/biz/ - Business & Finance

Sorry, what pray is a quant?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst

It's very respective

>>680525

i can see it's very respective, but does it have perspect too?

You could perhaps categorize me as a quant. Work for a hedge fund valuing different credit derivatives. This is done using structural models where you have to make assumptions on the dynamics of the firm's assets, aset volatility, default levels and so forth. With this information and given some contingent claim, the derivative is valued through simulations under the risk neutral measure.

Though the models seem fairly advanced, it's not too hard to do it. The difficult part of the job is convincing the fund managers, who are mostly old equity-dudes, that a certain investment is a good idea as the market value of this contract is too high/low or whatever. They don't understand what you do, the most difficult math they do is calculating P/E ratios.

Not a quant myself, but I heard that the huge sacks of cash you receive is barely adequate compensation for the shit you have to endure:

Zero life outside work
Abusive Managers
Barely better cow orkers
...

A few Slashdot posts I found on this subject (for those unfamiliar with slashdot: the article and summaries are crap but the comments are gold):

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/04/25/1858223/future-of-financial-mathematics

http://news.slashdot.org/story/05/01/19/2036229/my-life-as-a-quant

http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/05/31/098218/paul-wilmott-wants-to-retrain-and-reform-wall-streets-quants

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/04/25/1858223/future-of-financial-mathematics

>>680572
I feel you. Derivatives trader here. Got so tired of the "cash equities in Dallas" gang. But hey, they are the old boys network (for the time being...)

>>680517
You!

Buy an electric guitar and become a rockstar. I heard it's pretty lucrative and sort of respective. But first and utmost: You will understand this. You pop up in /biz and basically say you're too stupid to google what a quant does. You definetely don't have what it takes to be a quant. Or nurse, or hairdresser or anything that requires a minimum of self-initiative.

>>680572
Cool man, thanks for info, I'm not sure if that's your domain, but does it require lots of programming skill? I know there's different types of quants, but I heard c++ is essential, and the guys are mostly phd/masters, that's why it's so competitive. The pay must be worth it though.

>>680600
Well I did say I'm not really interested in becoming one, also I'm not a native english speaker, so all that math/finance talk is gibberish to me.

>>680601
Yes, programming is essential. I work in Matlab and VBA. I am not some crazy PhD from a third world country, I'm just a pleb engineer, having also studied some mathematics at ETH in Zürich.

The PhD guys primarily work in either the strats-division (strategy) of a bank or the risk-department. Working in strats is probably the most fun as you get to come up with new trading strategies using all sorts of clever mathematics. This is however very difficult and highly competitive as you compete with half of China.

I will be starting a new job soon at an IB in structuring. Here you basically try to come up with new products that you think clients will want to buy, and try to price them accordingly.

C++ is probably mostly required by strats. Matlab and VBA is most likely sufficient if you want to do structuring.

>>680615

do you use sql or is that more business intel?

>>680627
Never used sql, but I guess it can useful.

I started out rating credit derivatives at a ratings agency with a finance major. Spent a lot of free time programming and did a couple actuary exams + CFA level 1 before graduation so got a lot of entry level quant style attention.

Ended up doing 2 years at the ratings agency and finished the first 4 actuary exams and all 3 CFA exams on first try. Moved to a middle market bank and did a hybrid structuring/sales role where I helped build and test derivatives and sell them. Hours weren't as bad as people make it sound but the work was headache inducing, especially since coworkers all had thick accents and sloppy code. At this point I was at 100k salary with 30k bonus, did it 2 years which fulfilled the work experience requirement of my CFA.

Now I do risk management consulting with an actuarial consulting group. Hours are 8-6 and I get paid time off to study for the rest of my actuary exams, plus a raise for passing them. Deciding if I want to walk away from this for a PhD or just do MBA or masters.

I would definitely recommend VBA for all finance folks as it makes excel much more useful. C++ is a minimum, python is a thing, MATLAB is big at some places, and R is becoming a must too. But being good with math up to at least differential equations is very important too.

>>680525
I disagree. Most quants are a diamond dozed. It's a really doggy dog world. Very competitive to be considered a respective quant.

Another fan of VBA skills here. I know /g/ would laugh, but in the business world (where I'm paid to be a manager and not a developer), having that skill is like having a swiss army knife in the woods. It's extremely useful for data transformation and structuring, as well as automation in general.

Is a "Quantitative Programmer" considered a quant? Or just "Quantitative Analysts"?

I want to get into financial programming, but I don't want to work 80 hour weeks.

>>680652
>Doggy dog
Have you really been saying this your whole life? It's "dog eat dog" bud.

>>680683

found the newfag