with a math major and little knowledge of programming, what types of jobs are suitable?
now that I am taking all of the finance electives , I am curious
btw, I am a student at University of Waterloo in Canada.
I am interested in trader I'd like to know how I can land a job in Bulge Brackets firm..
I am novice but passionate about this field.
To land a job, of course with intensive networking, with stat/math major bachelors degree,
what's my odds? which part of finance field requires minimum knowledge of programming?
You can get a job easier than someone who has a finance degree
Do you want to be a quant or not?
I have a math degree with no programming abilities and I had no problem finding jobs. Just not as a quant.
which position are you?
I work on the investment team for a fundamental/event-driven hedge fund.
If you're a math major, I'd find it strange you don't have programming. On the other hand, I don't interview many math majors. @mrb87's reply indicates you don't need programming anyway.
If you do want to build up this skills while your brain is still plastic, there are plenty of online courses for programming.
If you've got nothing beyond Matlab, I suggest starting with Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/) and/or Code Academy (http://www.codecademy.com/learn) for Javascript to get an introduction to OOP. I did both in ~3 weeks while working full time ie it's not too demanding.
Then find an online course for C++ (if you want to go in the quant direction). I'm currently doing the Baruch C++ course (http://mfe.baruch.cuny.edu/online-programming/). You may not want to pay ~$1,500 for that, but you can do the first two levels for free and the software you need for it (eg Visual Studio 2012) is free.
The Baruch course is for people moving in an MFE/quant direction, but you can likely find more general C++ courses.
There are some free textbooks available eg Eric Robert's Programming Abstractions in C++ referred to on this page: https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs106b/textbook.shtml. You can legally download a draft copy of that textbook which is in good shape (although 975 pages long).
You can also access free resources through universities that put their lectures up for free eg MIT's OpenCourseWare platform, which has an introduction to programming (largely Python, with videos) an introduction to C++ (written materials only, unfortunately).
You definitely have a great shot given that you're a math major. Really, it seems these days that having a finance degree is about the worst degree to have while looking for a job in the finance industry....
^I wish someone told me this. +1
Trust me, so do I. So I make a point of telling everyone who is getting one to re-consider if they really have high aspirations.
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