POC
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| Total Posts: 2 |
| Joined: Jun 2012 |
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Hello all,
I was tipped off to this forum when I did a quick search of where I might get more information about what it takes to become a quant. It's a career path interests me because of the skill and challenge that (I have been told) is involved. There is no particular type that I am interested in, though research or model validation types appear the most intriguing (these being taken from Mark Joshi's guide).
My background:
-Graduated with 3.6 GPA from a relatively unknown school (so no pedigree). I majored in finance and minored in math so I've taken up a lot of the quantitative courses that would be required (calc III, diff eq, stats).
-I haven't taken any actual programming courses but am learning to program in C++ (I'm using C++ Primer as my basic text with Financial Numerical Recipes in C++ as a supplement.
-Right now I'm trying to line up a job as an entry level trader or financial analyst to get my feet wet. In a few years, perhaps after getting a CFA, go back to grad school for applied mathematics or financial engineering.
I am not afraid to go back to school part time to take a few more courses to be ready. My question is, what have I missed and what is superfluous? I know to somebody that is actually working as a quant, there is probably something amiss so I would appreciate any kind of input. I have tried to keep this relatively brief but am willing to provide any other information.
Thank you to anyone that gives their input!
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| What do you define as a quant? what do you want to do? |
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POC
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| Total Posts: 2 |
| Joined: Jun 2012 |
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A quant (as I understand it) is someone who applied different ideas from math, computer science towards finance to discover and then take advantage of inefficiencies within markets or someone who manages risk/creates general strategies.
In our student investment fund I spent time toying around with a DCF model a previous member had made and tried incorporating different things into it to improve it, like partial Kelly criterion for portfolio weighting and stress testing. That is the reason that I thought research or model validation were interesting. They sound similar to what I did, but at a much more advanced level of course. |
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I have never read MJ's guide.
I would advise against studying financial engineering. Stats or Comp Sci makes more sense then applied math.
I would learn to program well... It is probably your faster route it. For comp sci courses, I would look at udacity/coursera while you figure out what to do. |
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nick-GTP
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| Total Posts: 4 |
| Joined: Jul 2012 |
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