Best Way to Learn Quant Finance

Recently accepted a full-time offer for IB from my summer internship that will start in July 2024. I only have one semester left of college which I'll be starting soon and I only have classes two days a week, and will be working a part-time job during the semester, so I'll have a decent amount of free time and a ton of free time for the Spring semester as I will have no classes. With all this free time I will like to at least take a look at some quant finance stuff, but have no idea where to start. Are there any good resources I could check out to try and learn the skills needed for quant finance? Before anyone suggests classes at school, I'm taking the last remaining required classes this semester so I can graduate early, and don't want to take any classes next semester to save money as my school is fairly expensive even with some scholarships. 

Thanks in advance. 

7 Comments
 
Most Helpful

Theres so much to quant finance, main few areas are

1. Systematic trading (taking risk with algorithmic/systematic approach, including portfolio optimisation techniques)

2. Pricing e.g. Black-Scholes

3. High frequency trading  (clue's in the name, but maybe characterised by trying to minimise risk than seeking the right risk like in 1.).

For 1. Accessible if you know statistics, linear algebra. Start with AiFML De Prado and read his papers too to get a feel for the problems in the industry.

2. Really hard to learn if you dont have solid math background, if you're confident calculus and probability I'd recommend the Oxford Uni notes on Mathematics of Financial Derivatives (google them old ones are public), but in any case you will need to be learning from university notes/textbooks

3. No idea can't help you there

Core skills are Statistics, Probability, Caluclus, Linear Algebra, Coding in C++ or Python. Having some of these is necessary, if you don't I would focus on these first but self-studying these is a different answer. 

 

If my goal is just Systematic trading, do you think it's possible to self-study all the knowledge? Since my college really has no quant courses or math courses...

 

Dude you need to learn to code, then learn math, then learn advanced concepts. Becoming a quant isn’t some back pocket thing. Your competition pool rn is a bunch of juiced up excel monkeys in IB. Quant competition pool is the world’s smartest math nerds. Think about why would Jane street hire a 22yo math genius for 500k a year, it’s not bc he studied quant books for 6mo

 

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