Hi, I've been trolling these forums for a while now. I previously wanted to pursue a career in auditing but, from what I've read on these forums, a career in trading seems more interesting to me. I'm fairly new to the world of finance so I don't know much yet.
I'm currently a uni student in Australia doing a Bachelor of Commerce. And I'm having a bit of trouble deciding what subjects to do. I have decided that I want to major in finance. And with the remaining subjects I have available, I can decide to do a major in accounting or I can use those subjects to study a mixture of economics and maths but with no majors in them (btw: I don't think we have such things as minors at my uni). Basically, I have 8 spare subjects available. To get a major in accounting I need to study 8 subjects. So I can use those 8 on accounting or a mix of maths and economics.
I have read that maths is a plus when applying for jobs in trading but how much of a plus is it compared to a major in accounting?
The maths subject Im listing here has 2 other pre-requisite maths subjects so I cannot just take it on it's own. I need to devote 3 spare subjects to it. The maths subject that I wanted to take and that I felt was useful had this description:
"Mathematical definition of options and other financial derivatives; probability models; mathematical models of random processes; applications; numerical methods; Monte Carlo methods.
Objectives
The learning objectives of this unit are to:
* develop an understanding of the modern approach to evaluation of uncertain future payoffs;
* develop an understanding of the concepts of arbitrage and fair games and their relevance to finance and insurance;
* develop an understanding of concept of conditional expectation and martingales and their relation to pricing of financial derivatives;
* develop an understanding of the random processes such as Random Walk, Brownian Motion and Diffusions and be able to apply them for modelling real life processes and risk models;
* obtain skills to use Ito's formula ;
* develop the skills to price options by using the Binomial and Black-Scholes models;
* ability to simulate the price process and obtain prices by simulation;
* ability to formulate discrete time Risk Model in Insurance and use it for control of probabilities of ruin."
I am leaning towards the maths subjects and a bit of economics but am pretty clueless. So would this maths subject be much more relevant and useful than an accounting major? I already have some basic knowledge of accounting because I've already taken 2 accounting subjects.
Sorry if this is kind of confusing to read.
Thanks
edit: woops I really shouldve said econometrics instead of maths since the subject is listed under econometrics.
If you're interested in
If you're interested in going into trading, I would definitely recommend taking the math and econ courses. Accounting would be more useful were you to go into banking instead. When hiring for trading, banks look for people with strong quantitative backgrounds as opposed to those with accounting skills. The class you outlined seems like it would be very relevant for a career in trading and would teach you a lot about what you need to know to interview and understand the fundamentals behind the market.
I've decided to do the math
I've decided to do the math courses, but I've also realised that I could fit in the accounting major as well as long as I only take 3 math courses. The course listed above has 2 pre-requisite subjects so that means I could fit 3 math courses. I was browsing through the GS website and saw a list of backgrounds they prefer under the FICC division:
"Mathematics, including an understanding of partial differential equations, time series analysis, statistics and numerical techniques"
How important are partial differential equations and time series analysis for trading? Are they something one could learn on the job? I think the above subject in my original post doesn't cover partial differential equations and time series analysis so it means I would have to take extra math courses of which I don't have any available spots for unless I drop the accounting major.
The main reason why I decided to keep the accounting major is in case trading doesn't work out for me. I've read how there aren't many exit ops and so I thought accounting could keep some doors open if I happen to suck at trading lol.
Would you strongly suggest that I should drop the accounting major to learn about partial differential equations and time series analysis?
Thanks heaps, I've been asking quite a lot in this topic lol, sry about that I'm quite lost.