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Read the Basel rules. Read Dodd-Frank. The are lots of models being built. Among them: Op Risk AMA: an actuarial approach to ops losses Credit Risk IMM: requires modeling of default probabilities and losses given default Market Risk IRC: requires a comples single-factor Vasicek Market Risk...

Only if you want a job. :)

Another (somewhat more sanguine) thought. There is job growth in finance, even job growth in areas requiring some quant finance, but not in trading and structuring. The growth is in model review, audit, and regulatory control. I've been doing a lot of research in preparation for a seminar I'm...

Hmmmm. That material was part of my Probability Theory course, not part of a prerequisite.. Maybe they just dumb-down the material at American universities. I took it as part of my MS, but I shared the basic courses (probability, inference, multivariate) with the Ph. Ds.

sounds about right

types of probability density functions and their uses conditional probability MLE moment generating functions

If you can take several econometrics courses, it might not make a big difference. Both will require regression. You could easily justify a time series class in an Econ program. Micro is actually useful for portfolio work. Besides,most MS programs do a very poor job teaching practical finance...

I did both and found the MS to be more useful.

If you have a competing offer which is significantly better, you could mention that. Be careful, however - people have long memories.

There are several - at least five. Most of them a) are my former students and b) frequent this forum. I suspect you'll hear from them.

Those are difficult questions to answer - it's hard to evaluate anyone by their degree alone. I can say, however, that when we get a number of good people from a single place, we tend to go back there. Recent examples include Baruch, NYU, and CMU. We've also have a number of outstanding people...

I started my MS at age 31. Of course I did it part-time (@ NYU) and didn't have kids at the time. Maturity adds a certain perspective inasmuch as you know exactly why you are taking individual courses.

There is little chance of "getting recruited" anywhere. That's not the right way to approach it. You have to pursue jobs aggressively. I can name many people form 2nd and 3rd tier programs who have great jobs because they took a thoughtful and enthusiastic approach towards the job search. Joy...

Quants may care, but I can assure you the people for whom they work will look beyond pure quant skills. I can't think of anything to be avoided, per se.

IB experience is very relevant. A weakness that many MS job candidates have is that they know little or nothing about the business of banking and trading. For every trader, there are probably 10 people in support roles. Working in a non-quant role will make you a much better candidate later on.

To name a few items: Basic Intro: B/S, P&L, Cash Flow (Understanding the Income and Expense Summary is key) Financial Statement Analysis (ratios, etc - taught by ABA) Depreciation & Amortization Bad Debts Expense You could even take some basic courses at your local community college (I did).

If you don't understand the basics you'll be at a competitive disadvantage. Many MS programs require it and you need to know it, unless you're content to spend your career sitting in a windowless room, cranking out C++.

Financial accounting is one of the few disciplines in finance that you can effectively teach yourself. Get a textbook, get the accompanying workbook, and do all of the exercises.

600 for housing is unrealistic. 1000 is a better estimate. I used to spend 600/month - in 1987.

If you want to do research or to teach, get a Ph. D. If you want to be in the business world, get an MS.

We are no longer engaged in prop trading, as per Dodd-Frank. The extent to which HF trading firms see BB firms as predictable I can't address.

?

dillshau, come to my class tomorrow night @710pm at NYU if you want to. You could also sit in on a similar class at Baruch on Wednesday @ 7pm.

dillshau, that's not a good way to judge a grad school program. As an undergrad, you generally understand about 90% of the material as it is taught. Grad school is different is more like the real world. The instructor introduces the material and provides resources. It's up to you to digest it...

Take the math. You'll thank yourself later. I, too failed to take math as an undergrad (one semester, actually, pass-fail). Instead, I took five semesters of musicology as an econ major (two general music history, two jazz history, one core course on how musical styles change), which formed...

For risk management you should have time series, investments math (the inevitable annuity course in any actuarial program), multivariate stats, regression, and SQL. I'll think of more.

sonyask, I teach at the NYU program. If there are any questions I can assist you with, email me.

You should include a section of key subject matter NOT covered in a quant MS program like Accounting Corporate Finance Institutional Studies Fixed Income Markets Equity Markets Commodity Markets (I know that most programs say they cover it, but they do a uniformly poor job. I've had to...

I have no basis for comparison. I don't know anyone who has hired one. I've hired many NYU grads, some of them my students. My point is that the Stanford program is fairly new and fairly small. School reputation in and of itself is of limited use. I base my opinion on the quality of the...

I have no opinion. I have not have had any of them work for me. I'd like to get to know some so I can assess the program.

That's a good question. I have yet to encounter a Stanford MFM grad in my travels.

FYI, I teach at NYU and I find the students there unusually good at networking. I rarely have to help them find jobs. I echo Andy's sentiment - if you want to work in NYC, go to NYU.

If you're a quant, you'll need graduate education. Without experience, however, you're just spinning your wheels. Best bet: go to work and get your firm to pay for you to go at night. I did 2 graduate degrees at NYU that way. With some experience, you'll find your motivation is MUCH different.

Trading, Treasury, Risk, primarily.

I ran the QMAP program for four years. It's a rotational job program, not a classroom experience.

I beg to differ, Mike. I think it goes back further. Here's something from Garbade from 1986.

I think that this thread does no one any good. Andy...

albo, Barny, please stop bickering or take it to another medium.

MFE programs are already in the same boat. When it was just CMU and NYU in 2001, everyone was easily placed. Consider: what's the key stat of any program today? Placement. And those numbers aren't great.

I've also seen it used as a quick way to estimate VaR.

You can use it as a very fast way of accurately estimating the p&L of a large, complex rates portfolio. It also informs the hedging process, e.g. if the 1st PC covers 95% of the total variance, a simple duration-weighted hedge should be fine. BTW: People seem to like A Tutorial on Principal...

From said former student: "If you want to work in the rates space; that could be US treasury or emerging markets or end up there in risk, trading or quant area, knowing PCA is extremely helpful. The problem in these areas is the number of time series available. E.g The US treasury desk: There...

I just heard from a former student who landed an excellent job that one of the most useful things he learned was PCA. I didn't teach it, but I provided some references and encouraged students to be familiar with it.

Zeuge, some of the most senior quants I know still manipulate data in Excel. I've been at this since 1983 and I still do...

Jayanthan, I have bad news for you. Quant finance is not about selling anything or making deals. If that's what you like, get an MBA.

Quantitative Risk Management

The need for qualified portfolio analysis and reporting people represents the single biggest demand vs supply imbalance on Wall Street. Keishi Hotsuki, CRO of Morgan Stanley:

I recently joined the Claremont faculty as an adjunct and I like what I see. They have given a lot of thought to the curriculum.

Contact American Corporate Partners. They specialize in helping vets. They have a good mentoring program. I was working with a Marine Major for a while.

The math you learn won't be much different from what you know. The good thing about these certificates is that they provide guided reading for the motivated. And by motivated I mean people who will understand WHY it's important to learn the material. These programs provide the institutional...

FRM / PRM are useful AFTER you get a job. No one in industry will be impressed that you know how to take a test.

Better read Dodd Frank Titles IV and VI. That spells it out pretty clearly.

@ Cary: This statement is categorically false.

Sure. I'll try to get something to you today.

Because a) you will lack key information about flows upon which all traders rely b) you will lack the knowledge of the institutional idiosyncrasies of the market which will make you a babe in the woods and c) you will lack the institutional backing (capital) that will make you a viable counterparty.

There's no simple answer. There are probably more pure quants than there are jobs for them. Quants who are comfortable with large data sets - that's a different story. Quants who are comfortable with large data sets and who can communicate well - those are in demand and trade at a premium.

MFE programs don't prepare you to be a trader any more than doing pushups prepares you to be a professional athlete. Most traders aren't quants. The quant piece is one aspect of a particular set of trading strategies. The notion that you can simply babysit algorithms and watch the money pile...

True - I fear many are sold a bill of goods. True - And they're from the same 5 schools. If you're not from MIT or Cal Tech, good luck. True - I don't see a lot of bleeding-edge stuff anymore. Not necessarily. Regulatory demands have caused many risk groups to double in size. There are also jobs...

What are the time series? There are several ways this can be approached.

Most people with access to books and records are, by policy, required to take two weeks off with limited access to systems. Many instances of fraud have been detected during these vacation periods.

Usually I just use what Excel makes available. Sometimes I have to tweak things a bit to do waterfall/walkthroughs or HLCO graphs.

This is becoming more and more difficult. You shouldn't anticipate that kind of career path post-UBS.

Spreadsheet. Familiarize yourself with EDA techniques. http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/eda.htm

There are too many law schools producing too many lawyers. Those lawyers now can't find jobs in law. There used to be five quant finance programs. Now there are over 100. That is where we're heading.

Go take a look at turnitin.com to see what it does.

Project Finance is just a special case of Discounted Cash Flow analysis (DCF). There's a lot of stuff available about that.

It's not simple at all. Administering stops is very messy. Do you put size limits on as the trader gets close? Do you close out the position in an illiquid market? What do you do when the trader breaks through the stop? Close the position out? Fire him/her? Send him/her home for a few weeks...

Google "Volcker Rule" and "Dodd Frank" and you'll be swamped by hits describing the risk impact. Contact me if you don't find what you need. I've been doing a lot of research on this as well as working out my firm's response. I'll be giving a masterclass on this topic later this spring at...

Qualifications like CFA, FRM, PRM are more helpful once you have a job. Employers are unlikely to be impressed by them if you have no experience. Absent experience, all they show is that you took another test. You'd be better off studying the specifics of the industry and/or companies in which...

Every event like this is a mass interview. Dress accordingly, unless you already have a job.

Financial mathematrics <> finance. "Finance", broadly speaking (in my opinion) is best described as the understanding of the market for currecies, securities, and commodities as well as the valuation of companies. These markets can be (partially) understood through certain models of behavior...

Go to work. You can't be sure this is really what you want to do until you've tried it. If it is, then you will be even more motivated to get more education and moreover, you'll know why you need it. If not, you'll save yourself a lot time, money, and pain.

Do you follow the markets? Do you read the financial press? Do the workings of the macroeconomy fascinate you? If the answer to these three aren't a resounding "yes", proceed with extreme care? When you interview, be able to prove that you've done your homework. Know who any company's...

The biggest challenge you may have is proving that you have a genuine interest in finance.

http://www.quantnet.com/live/

The CGU online info session is this evening @ 8PM EDT for those interested.

Garbade has written extensively about this. It's also described in his textbooks Securities Markets and Fixed Income Analytics.

The world has changed, crispally. The mobility between the front office and support functions in the post-UBS world has been greatly reduced. Don't take a job with the thinking of an "exit opportunity".

Because there aren't that many trading jobs and most of the trading jobs that do exist don't rely all that heavily on quants. That's not to say that there aren't other front office positions out there - marketing, structuring, sales, advisory, consulting to name but a few - but the ones where...

Key for risk. Not so much for trading. I tell my students that most of them won't end up trading anyway, so they may as well learn something useful.

I don't know if you all have seen this, but it made me smile.

My Firm's risk function gets billions of records per week. Whether you're developing methodologies or running reports, you're sifting through data first. Lots of data. Databases skills are the meat and potatoes. Quant skills are dessert.

Learn SQL.

Alternatively, do PCA, pre and post crisis, on swap curves for usd, jpy, eur, cad, chf, gbp, sgd, hkd, aud, nzd and any others of interest. What is hedge efficiency like using the 1st PC? 1st and 2nd PC? Compare with sovereign YCs and perhaps to oil curves.

This is much more the norm than the exception. The model review team is required to be independent by various rules, including OCC 2000-16 and 2011-12. The most logical place for it to reside is within Risk at a BB firm.

Take 8 portfolios: equity-heavy, FI-heavy, commodities-heavy, FX-heavy, all with and without optionality. Run them through V/CV VaR, HistSim VaR, and MC VaR using 1, 2, and 4 years of data for the VaR. Compare results at 99%, 95%, and 90%. Try using weighting algorithms (DWAE, exponential) to...

allen (at) cims.nyu.edu is what the NYU website has.

Steve Allen of NYU knows a lot about this and has many strongly held opinions. Contact him. He's retired and on the beach (figuratively) and loves to discuss this kind of thing. He has written about it as well.

Model testing, usually involving some coding, is key. There is a big and growing need for these people. The challenge is mobility. The risk business is changing rapidly. In the past, people moved between risk and the FO and back regularly. This happens less frequently now. I know many...

One of my students there was originally there as non-degree. She applied and got in.

Furthermore, the likelihood of said lateral moves taking place has been significantly reduced by the recent events at UBS.

SimonZheng: Where exactly are you getting your information?

The standard is closing price. For weekly data, it's weekly @ Wednesday or weekly @ Thursday (fewer holidays). Just be cognizant of the fact that the existence of a price does not necessarily imply that anything (or any size) actually traded.

Students considering graduate education in finance would be well-advised to consider this program. I'm on their board and I like what I see.

That may or may not be true, but in my experience, most successful people in the business came chasing their passion. The people chasing the money are at a disadvantage. Finance is intense and grueling. Those with a fire in their belly are usually more willing to put in the extra effort.

I was a trader. Basic economics prepared me far more than any quant courses I took. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that quant courses can actually hurt, because they lead some people to look for patterns where they might not exist. Lots of money was spent in the 80s using GARCH and the 90s...

Many of the jobs are described in Careers in Financial Management, which has been linked many times in this forum.

Most people who want to become traders don't. Most people who become traders don't do it for very long. Most successful traders don't use quant methods. Most quant methods don't work very well. Do a quant masters degree because you find the material interesting and/or because you want to work...

That is a really, really bad reason for wanting to do a quantitative masters degree.

When you go job hunting, do your initial research with a shotgun but your interviewing with a rifle. You need to have focus. The list you present is way too broad. It's like saying I'd like engineering or interior design or journalism. (Although FX is included in sales and trading.) Do your...

Bani, read the "Careers in Financial Management" pdf that has been posted here. You should try to narrow your interests down. I made the same mistake 30 years ago (too broad a search) and it cost me.

Well said, mfegrad. I agree with your assessment of the obstacles facing MS students. (I won't call it engineering - engineering isn't what you learn and it's rarely what you end up doing.) Actually, having interviewed hundreds of people, I can tell you it's usually pretty easy to spot the...

I hear that Baruch has hired Ellen Reeves, a well-established job hunt coach to help with resumes and job searches. How is this working out?

Automatically delete any post written by anyone with no clue about or discernible interest in finance expressing interest in it simply because some (presumably less intelligent) friend of theirs makes more than they do in it.

DMX: Fair point.

No difference.

The biggest challenge career-changers face (in my opinion) is that of convincing the interviewer that their interest is genuine. There are too many people out there who just see dollar signs without ten requisite "fire in the belly". Read all of the care material available on Quantnet. Andy...

I'll be there, too. I'm on their MFE board. I'll be giving a talk on commodities for neophytes the day before the conference. I'll also be touring the colleges with my 17-year-old daughter.

3. Ask Joy Pathak how. He's the reigning world champion internship expert.

Ask Bloomberg help. They are usually quite responsive.

Resume length? Consider: Declaration of Independence: 1 page Magna Carta: 1 page Declaration of the Rights of Man: 1 page Your resume... (unless of course it's an academic CV requiring the itemization of publications and conference presentations)

I keep seeing people asking what courses they need to get jobs in finance. It's not about courses. It's about skills. Want to get the attention of an interviewer? Tell him or her that you're a SQL expert. My department takes in billions of records per week. The analytics are the dessert...

Not true. That's not the way things work. While most operational losses result in losses, some result in gains. If the underlying activity was done outside of policy, the trader would get fired. It would be too risky to keep such a person on staff.

Do PCA on returns to the points on the yield curve, pre-crisis and post. Different currencies. Zero and coupon curves. Risk free vs spreads. Fixed income vs oil, NG, and power curves. How different from each other? How changed?

I'd look at sovereign CDS spreads on Bloomberg. GCDS <Go>.

The best quants I know don't trade or even write code for trading. They do research and risk analytics. To answer your question: Communication skills. Math skills are cheap. People who can communicate complex ideas in simple terms are rare.

It worked well for me.

In fact, it's quite nice. But after 28 years in the business and literally thousands of late nights, I can't say it's come easily.

I just got back. It was a two week holiday prolonged by the hurricane. My family toured the south of Spain while I went to London in order to pay for it all.

Model reviewers are quants, in every sense of the word. They're not front-office quants, but they interact constantly with the desk. Some of the best quants I know are model reviewers. I'm not on 24/7, but I frequent this forum to take the temperature of the the applicant pool and...

Ask Joy Pathak, who frequents this site. He's the expert.

I seem to see a lot of physics guys in model review, although that's certainly not quant-lite.

I think (know, actually) that there are a lot more quant-oriented jobs out there than many think there are. A major problem I've seen on this forum is that everyone wants to do algorithmic trading or front-office model development. How many jobs do you think there are in those areas? Not all...

Richard, there are probably about 100 quant finance programs out there. All have highly numerate people enrolled. You're competing against them. At a minimum, you need to accumulate the institutional knowledge of the space to have a chance. You'll also have to demonstrate that your decision...

I have not observed this in the workplace. My boss is on the operating committee of my firm and reports to the CEO. He is Japanese. Of my seven peers (all MD's) one is Japanese, two are Chinese, and one is Indian. It sounds like the writer needs to do more empirical work.

I sign off on all risk hires for my firm. Either degree will do. We often refer to quants as being good "athletes" (or not), meaning they have solid quant skills that can be pointed in any direction. Specifics usually don't matter that much for entry-level jobs unless you're being hired to do...

@Yike: Once, (just this once) I agree with Ilya. Whether or not a University as a whole acts as a profit maximizing entity, I think it's safe to assume that the objective function regards money in quant finance programs. Think about it: the students don't get much financial aid, the student...

I have never heard anyone be objective. Look to the Euromoney / Risk Magazine / Latin Finance rankings.

donny: Good call. Happiness is not underrated.

The notion of "proving yourself" in New York sounds a bit narcissistic. If you really like NY and want to live and work there, do it for that reason. Singapore is a great city. I'd love to workthere. If the opportunity is good and you like the people, take the job there.

vuze: As my Chinese friends might say (or transliterate): Xiang Joy Pathak xue xi. Learn from him. Joy: You should write a book or give a seminar on the topic of job hunting.

It's not uncommon to do phone screening interviews, especially when candidates live some distance from the office.

Beyond Private Equity, finance isn't the place to go to learn how to run a business. Nor is it simply a place to go to "make a killing.". The Street is littered with the metaphorical bodies of those who came into the business for a fast buck and ended up doing hard work for not a lot of money...

Amanda: I can vouch for that.

Alex Krause: Your reference to "low intellectual rigor" bespeaks a lack of understanding of what bankers do and how hard they work. It's not just pitchbooks and DD roadshows. I cover many bankers from a risk standpoint and their work requires as much "intellectual rigor" as anything else...

Talk to Joy Pathak, who is a frequent participant in this forum. He is the expert.

Jim, I've been in this business for 28 years. Some parts of it are cut-throat, most (by far) are not. I also haven't met many "macho" quants.

When in doubt, refer to first principles. To understand power, you need to start with LMP, which stands for Locational Marginal Pricing. It describes how power is distributed, which can be described as sort of like the way that water finds its own level, flowing back and forth. PJM is the...

I know many, many traders without masters degrees. Some of the best in the business didn't go to grad school.

I've got bad news for some of you. We in management know who's working and who's slacking off. It's quite easy to tell.

What do you think is unique about this program? What is the worst thing about the program? Are the applied classes taught by academics or practitioners? What job did the program help you land? Describe the student body in 12 words or less. Do you think you got an education or did you just get...

Wow. You all seem negative. Really negative. While there's some truth in every post here, I think I can make a few statements based upon my experience as a trader and a risk manager. 1. There's plenty of mentorship going on, but you have to seek it out - It doesn't plunk itself down in your...

Do PCA on USD, EUR, GBP, JPY and a few other swap curves, before and after 2008. Compare them to similar curves for sovereigns. Has the nature of yield curve dynamics changed? How do yield curve dynamics compare to those of the oil forward curve? Agricultural curves? Metals curves?

For every story like this there are fifty untold stories of smart people slaving away for wages that, on a per-hour basis, are far from spectacular.

@rajanS: The ERM is new. I don't know of anyone who's done both. While there are certainly transactions that can combine securities and commodities risks, the two worlds generally lie on orthogonal rays. The best energy quant I know (Alex Eydeland) doesn't give a rat's hindquarters for most of...

@nchiang: I helped screen the readings and judge the questions for the exam. The aim is to provide a structured approach to learning the basics of energy. If you're a petroleum engineer, it's probably a waste of time. In that case, you'd be better off getting an MFE. Like the FRM, it...

PS: I got my parking spot - right next to the building in which I teach.

I made all my students read this. If you're interviewing for model review at a bank, you'd better be familiar with it.

@Lun: The OCC docs (particularly the latter one, which was done in conjunction with the Fed) represents best practice. It's the standard to which all banks have to adhere. Like 186,282 miles per second: it's not just a good idea - it's the law.

Then two key documents are OCC 2000-16 and OCC 2011-12. Both are readily available on the web. You should also review papers by Rebonato and by Derman.

(That's Monty Python for those of you under 40.)

Walk to the university? Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would...

Take the stock, do first differences. Feed the differences into the GARCH software of your choice. Observe the alpha, beta 1 and beta 2. Estimate the unconditional variance of the time series differences. (This is the sigma squared nought.) Starting with sigma squared nought, use the...

You do the GARCH on the underlying.

I've seen GARCH used to estimate implied vol where there there is no data.

Any respectable 4-year institution and either a connection or a lot of persistence will get you an interview. As long as you have taken some math, stats, comp sic, and finance and/or economics, no one will laugh at you. (My firm -a big one- just hired a music major into its op risk area.). Some...

There are two important points to be made here: 1) While it's true that titles often don't mean much, benefits count and are a form of compensation. Analysts are typically not "officers" and usually get two weeks of vacation. Associates usually (but not always) are officers and get a much...

My firm would probably bring someone with a Ph.D in as an Associate.

@MichaelKrause: Well said. There is already way to much questionable behavior taking place in this industry, and many people place themselves on very slippery slopes.

That doesn't make it right.

Don't reneg. It's unethical. Furthermore, people don't forget. It could come back to haunt you.

Both are good programs. Making comp a criterion is short-sighted. Talk to the students. Talk to the faculty

I've been teaching risk courses for over 10 years and I have yet to find a textbook I like. Basel docs and Riskmetrics can provide the basics. Look for academic papers after that.

There are tutorials available on the web. Unfortunately there's no substitute for real project work, where you have to learn stuff, fast.

Firms do seed capital investments regularly. It happens often with funds set up by former employees. From scratch, it would be very hard.

Often the most interesting posts are those with the most replies. Can you put that next to each item on the Forum?

Yeah, 20 years ago. Is your professor a dinosaur? Is there actually a windows version? I used the DOS version back in the day. Weren't some chapters of the bible originally in RATS? If you have no luck here, try sci.stat.math on the Usenet (Google Groups). It's a dinosaur hangout. I'll bet...

Interns work. For the most part they're intelligent unskilled labor, but useful nonetheless. I had one intern edit a large technical document for consistency of voice (it had been written by several people.) I had another collect data from some old reports so I could do an analysis with a...

BUT if you already have a job at a good firm, itis easier to transfer than to apply from the outside if you network well. I did two graduate degrees at night, had them paid for by my company, was able to apply the learning immediately, and came out with four additional years of experience...

1) The CFA is no substitute for work experience. As someone who has been hiring quant interns and quant analysts for over 10 years, I can assure you of that. Proving you can study for a test, be it CFA, FRM, PRM, Series 7, isn't proof you can do a job. 2) I'm an adjunct faculty member in the...

Folks, you should do exactly whay Joy suggests, whatever it is. He is a master of this process.

Winding down some prop, but the demand for trading quants continues to go up.

No decrease in demand, just a greater increase in supply, some of it of dubious quality.

I disagree. Model reviewers (easily the second most populous function in risk, after desk coverage) need MFE skills. VaR model people need MFE skills. Senior desk coverage people, as well, need to understand the pricing models. Many of these have PhDs, but others have an MFE. The CRO at...

I'd go BoA. Citi seems kind of like Yugoslavia after Tito. How you fare depends on whether you're in Serbia, Croatio, or Bosnia.

Undergrads with technical expertise are often found in control functions like market risk, credit risk, operational risk. They do grunt work, but they get valuable experience.

For asset management, I'd say statistics. I've had dozens of Markowitz -type conversations with our AM people. I can't remember ever talking about PDEs. Besides, many asset managers will shy away from derivatives beyond simple swaps.

It's all about tracking error, mean/variance analysis, and asset allocation. Buy side is usually a bit more macro-driven.

No one can help you if you fail to tell us who you are where you go to school what you're studying what experience you have what you want to do. Maybe even post your resume.

Quant managers travel occasionally. Quants typically don't travel much.

This article is inaccurate if it implies that all entry-level banking jobs go to Ivy grads. While many IB analyst jobs go to Ivy leaguers, many technical jobs do NOT because those students often tend not to have the applied skills necessary. I've had much more luck with Ivy grads in the...

It will be much harder to make your way into trading if you're at a bank. If you REALLY want to trade, stay. If you're looking for longer-term opportunities (ever notice how few old traders there are?), go to the bank.

@TBeas: I've been teaching in quant finance programs since 2002 and this is by far the best source of unofficial information (the kind you need). Most advice-type questions you have already been asked, and if not, just post them and the combination of business people, academics and students...

Not true. Quant traders *always* have graduate degrees. And most trading floor staff have at least an MBA.

@RedPanda, @Timmi: All I can do is speak to my own experience. We I see career switchers, I look for proof of genuine interest. Then I imagine where we might make use of them. Stats is a nice thing to know, but its application to finance is usually fairly specific (time series and stochastic...

Want to be useful in an entry-level job? Take a database course. Learn SQL. I know many people who got in the door as analysts and ended up going on to bigger and better things.

RedPanda, Alain is right. You need to think about what you bring to the table. Remember you'll be competing for jobs with many people who are both younger and more experienced than you. There are many, many academics out there looking for an entre into finance. Think about what would make...

They do entry-level finance. Some do model review, some review pricing and parameter inputs, some run reports, some make sure positions are correct, some code. Hours vary. If you're not willing to work 10-12 (sometimes more) hours per day, you want to avoid this field. Commutes vary...

The degree is more powerful as an entree, but once you're in the door, the FRM/PRM will equip you with a lot of practical reference knowledge. The FRM (for sure) and the PRM (I assume) make you learn about Basel, various risk-based analytical techniques, and a chunk of inferential statistics...

FRM/PRM are kind of like the CFA - they make you digest a lot of occasionally complex material. I think of it as a way to "jump-start" your knowledge base. I wouldn't do it before I got the job - it's a lot of work and you might go into a field where you didn't need all of that info. Once in...

Check this out:

In the last ten years, the number of graduate programs in quant finance has exploded, as has the number of MFE grads with an eye on top jobs at big-name firms. A decade ago there were seven graduate level quant programs in the United States; today there are close to a hundred – each cranking out...

What option? Which prices? ATM?

There are different types of traders. Some trade purely off of customer flow, providing liquidity to the market, usually for a small spread and taking few positions. Others trader in a proprietary fashion, positioning to take advantage of market moves. Many are a combination of the two.

Communication is everything. If you can't communicate clearly, you're just a quant commodity, just like the hundreds of other quants graduating from BS, MS, and MQF programs. Quants that succeed can express themselves clearly to their managers, who often have fewer quantitative skills than...

@Vladimir: quick observation: "a LOT of experience" to me means 20+ years and includes several economic cycles. Is that what you mean?

This is a rather scary thread. Look, you're either sqeaky clean,,,or you're not. Finance (and particularly trading) is a business that will test your moral strength. There are plenty of weasels that succeed (I've known a few), but they're easy to spot. If you're easily tempted, you'd do...