Direction for a Target School Math Major
Hey guys,
I'm interested in a career in finance, but I just don't know where to start.
I'm technically a senior at an Ivy League university where I studied math and german. I say technically because I decided to basically spend my last semester abroad which for various reasons doesn't allow me graduate until this december although im done my course load. I have a very good GPA (3.91), and care about math a lot (like the process, the formality etc.). I did some work for a small Asset Management firm last summer, but didn't particularly like it and have decided to stay in germany until december and intern at an electronics firm just because the position was easy to find, seemed like a good way to improve my mathematical maturity, and allowed me to get closer to fluency in german, which is something i also care about.
Anyway, I'm looking for direction post december. I've had an affinity for financial concepts for the last 1.5 years, but really haven't found my thing. Most of what I've done is just independent reading. I can't stand what i perceive as a lack of rigor in trading (I've read that much of the academic consensus is that short term price movements are essentially independent of previous movements, which makes charting bullshit), equity research seems more rigorous but has no interesting math, and M&A just doesn't appeal to me at all. I guess I'm more attracted to the quant side of things, I don't know, like derivatives structuring or something. But here the problems really begin.
My programming experience amounts to matlab and a tiny bit of python, and I feel like these quant positions really are for PhDs. I don't intend to get a PhD to go into finance. I think that's bullshit and probably torturous. Plus, I really don't think I'm that good at math. I like/am good at probability, but although I really respect pure math, I don't think I could even pull of a decent PhD dissertation. I've been exposed to some very smart people at my school and don't think im on that level. I was thinking about maybe a masters in financial mathematics just to give some legitimacy to the reading I've already done, but I've read that a lot of these programs aren't worth it and really don't get you to being a quant anyway.
So I guess my question is twofold. One, what industry should some like me be looking into and two, what sort of steps should I take to get there?
Sorry for the long question. I'm just sort of lost.
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