Econometrics in Finance?

My Econ MSc program (Europe) offers 5 fields of specialization and I have to pick one:

  1. Econometrics
  2. Financial Economics
  3. Maro and International Econ
  4. Micro
  5. Public Econ

I am considering taking up #1, but I'm wondering how useful a specialization in Econometrics would be without a PhD, if I were to look at quant or risk management positions after graduation? (keeping in mind that doing an MSc is more normal here than in the US, and not just a gateway into PhD's)

4 Comments
 
 

If you want to get into vanilla IB then Econometrics would not be useful at all in a practical working sense unless you want to join a hedge fund of some sort. I also did an MS program albeit mine was in General Finance and I took a lot of quant heavy classes because I thought it would help me speed things up on the job, the job came and it was mostly addition and subtraction on my phones calculator everything else came prebuilt in our companies model database.

Did not once need to build a Monte Carlo Simulation or even use a financial calculator and I know I will never need that, and all my friends who did simpler classes got the same jobs through my schools popularity without having to pull out their hair trying to understand advanced calculus and regressions. 

 

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