If my main goal is earn the most amount of money excluding very high percentiles of each career which of these is it
(If you could answer without the “require two different personalities answer”)
Buyside quants (supposedly sell side makes less than big tech engineers) vs bankers (PE/IB/HF):
1st: which is more competitive is it the same amount is it more but just slightly or a lot
2nd:which career makes more stable high amounts of money
3rd: which skills are harder to acquire
4th: which career has more high paying options with its relevant degrees (stats, math,cs and accounting,finance,econ ) and experience you get from it
5th: which career is more stress free at entry/junior, intermediate, and senior levels
bump
How many alts do you have
A lot
1. Quant trading is significantly more competitive, often involving 10+ rounds of interviews, and requires a deep understanding of probability and statistics. Getting questions right is often not enough; you need to get them right quickly, or you can get cut for being too slow in processing complex probability questions.
2. IB might have higher job security, for quants, if you hit a certain loss threshold, it's common practice that you're fired immediately. Assuming you are quite good at both quant trading, takes the win, guaranteed TC fresh out of college ranging from 400-600 thousand. Scales up as you become more senior, lots of the best retire by 30-35.
3. Quant trading.
4. Optionality of a STEM degree is unmatched; lots of STEM majors go to S&T, some IB, lots at HFs, and PE shops.
5. Neither is even remotely stress-free at any level. Lots of people crumble under the pressure in both and need to quit within their first couple of years.
Source: im in IB and best friend is a buy side quant trader
Hm I see, yeah im getting quite a lot of mixed responses (and I wasnt specifically talking only about traders I was thinking also strategist developers researchers but still good info)
So for developers and researchers at quant shops, the work is extremely technical; they develop the strategies that traders employ, and the best in those roles are often PhDs. Best performing shops usually require a PhD so, financially, its probably not the best option just because of the forgone income.
There's also quant SWEs. Similar to trading you could land the role directly out of college.
Compensation for devs and researchers is the highest, maybe 20% above the figures from earlier, but imo not worth the extra time in school, you'll need a masters degree at the very minimum to even be considered.
SWE comp is about in line with trader comp figures I shared earlier.
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I know both are extremely competitive compared to 99% of careers that exist but to your first answer, you do think careers like investment banking are a much more realistic goal to have right?
Definitely. There are just more seats in IB and less differentiation from candidate to candidate, quant trading definitionally cannot accommodate even half as many seats as IB. They play volatility, dislocation, and profit through mispricing. If it became overly saturated, the strategies just wouldn't work anymore.
Also, there's the learning curve, you could be interview-ready for IB in ~2-3 weeks of consistent studying from the ground floor. For quant roles, you'd need to have taken prob and stat 1 & 2, linear algebra, calc 4, and then apply those concepts to the markets. My buddy has multiple textbooks at his desk to reference.
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