Hey all,
I was just up at a BB sell day and they were constantly badying about the individual groups in terms of "this group will develop your quant skill set" or your "quant background" or this group is "quant intensive". Are they talking about ratio analysis etc. or just plain old "middle school math" skills? What does term "quant" generally refer to in this context?
Thanks in advance.
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middle school math
I don't think they mean middle school math. Quant skills would mean financial modeling skills--college level mathematics and financial mathematics (not in the sense of ratio analysis.) Investment banking requires those middle school math skills--quant skills go above and beyond those (think of a fixed income trading desk--understanding of the greeks, etc.)
quant skills: stochastic processes, time series analysis, differential equations, data mining, numerical techniques.
and for the CS majors: algorithms, computer architecture, coding.
you can get softer quant stuff than what i mentioned. what i mentioned is the hard edge.
none of that will be covered in banking
not in IBD, no.
I suppose I should rephrase that, in a banking context (not engineering/math/science, etc.), what does having a solid quant skill set refer to?
in ibd, quant skills are +-*/, but sometimes they throw in ^ to make your life difficult.
in trading, quant is a whole new ball game. can be very advanced levels of math.
Quant Skills (Originally Posted: 09/07/2006)
Goldman, Merrill, JPM, and UBS are all at my school this week and one thing I couldn't help but noticing was how all the representatives talked about the importance of quant skills for IB. Now, I may be meeting all the wrong kinds of liberal studies kids but I absolutely cannot see a history major with sufficient quant skills to really wow the banks. (I am doing an Asian history minor so i have a lot of classes with history kids)
How are all the history majors getting into IB?
This has been asked a bunch of times; you don't need any fucking quant skills unless you want to be a trader or something similar. They have desks in investment banks that do all that bullshit for you. You could handle investment banking with a middle school
Well, when they say quant skills, they do not mean calc 3, diff eq, linear algebra, or whatever have you. If you are comfortable with numbers, you have what they call quant skills.
well said. high school maths with finance 101 and common sense gets on thru IB.
i'd say attitude is far more important that quant skills or the like. you need to be able to suck it up, put in the hrs and be used to not being appreciated (to put it mildly). life is a lot easier if you kind-of enjoy your work and people like working with you
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