What would be the best undergrad degree for a quant? Currently i am a Finance undergrad because at first i wasn't sure if i wanted to be a quant.
My second question is this, is the quant role taking over sales and trading by way of how they are able to build financial models and programmers are able to code them into automated systems which are quickly replacing human traders? Or there still a place for the old fashioned "trading floor jobs." Thanks.
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Assuming you have no quantitative finance degree, I would attempt to double major in Finance and applied mathematics. If you throw in a minor in computer science you'll be set.
As automated trading systems get more complex they may start to replace execution trading. However, proprietary trading with complex strategies that rely heavily on individual trader experience may remain an area for "old fashioned" trading floor jobs for a little longer.
Alright sweet, thanks man. Nice sig.
Alright so i found out that my school offers a mathematical finance degree, so would a double major in mathematical finance and computer science be a good combo?
Sure. But that sounds like you're gonna have a nightmare curriculum. Unless you're already confident in at least one of the two majors, consider a minor in CS instead.
Also, as mass_marines pointed out, a strong stats foundation is very important in addition to the math and CS. So you have your work cut out for you. Don't overload yourself and ruin your gpa. keep it reasonable and really try to learn the material and gain a strong intuition.
to echo above, some combo of applied math/cs would be great, but buy-side vs. sell-side quant will have some differences in terms of focus. the more grad-level courses you can sneak into as an undergrad the better, as having some basic knowledge of stochastic calculus/SDEs/measure-theoretic probability for sell-side derivatives work, even if you don't use it on a day-to-day basis, can help you handle the language issues if your job is more technical. buy-side quant is a bit different, as there are advanced time series methods and models you can lift for some work (i.e. borrowed signal processing techniques), monte carlo work for rigorous stress testing, and extreme backtesting work demanded by stat arb. depends on what you want to do
Thanks for the info guys, when i meet with my counselor this week i will ask about double majoring finance and applied math with CS minor
For sure man, i still need to look into and see if i can handle it.
If you had to drop one, I would go with Math+CS, or even a Math+CS(minor). As for finance, you can just take a few electives on options theory and pricing models and that should be fairly sufficient at the undergrad level. I don't think quants are hired for their ability to explain their models in an economic sense, so a finance major may be overkill for a quant wannabe. Just a thought.
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