What kind of skills do firms like AQR look for in terms of math and programming background? Are there particular programming languags/specific classes they like to see on a resume?
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They're huge on Python. The package Pandas was developed by one of their former employees and is heavily used there.
They're huge on Python. The package Pandas was developed by one of their former employees and is heavily used there.
I went to an event where one of their analysts came and presented his thesis on Stock Beta calculation. He specifically expressed that the firm wants PhD's in economics.
For front-office research and trading roles, they hire undergrads (a lot from Penn's M&T Program, which is cliff asness' alma mater) and Phds in math/econ/hard sciences. They also hire MBAs for product and account management roles.
What kind of skills do they generally look for from undergrads?
Very technical background in math/CS/physics/engineering. A regular finance or econ major won't suffice. The people I knew from Penn who got jobs there were either finance/engineering or finance/math.
I'm guessing that my main question here is -- is there a demand in Asset Management for quantitative analysts or is it still a largely qualitative sector?
most large asset management firms have quant teams. backgrounds are computer sci, engineering, finance, often with MBAs or phds from leading schools: MIT, notre dame, stanford, berkeley, harvard, upenn etc. it's hard core data analysis. the results of all this number crunching contribute to investment decisions, so they hire the brightest from all over the world. some guy at my firm placed in the top 30 places of a national math contest in china. think about that for a second.
not sure about programming, but excel skills/data mining are obviously huge
Lol it's ridiculous
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