offer compare: Nomura S&T option desk VS blackrock PAG, active investment analytics (NY)

Greatly appreciate your opinion. Little bit about me, non-target school with 1.25 yr working experience at a BB in quantitative analytics role. BR pay slightly less than NM. But its not a concern for me.

I like both opportunities and I know they drive me towards completely different directions. The struggle is like this: Blackrock > Nomura S&T > PAG

Any input from you guys?

22 Comments
 
Best Response

Congrats on the fantastic offers!

This really depends on your desired career path and your risk preferences. PAG will help you develop more widely applicable skills if you decide to branch out into, say, other areas of quant, or if you decide to exit finance. S&T will be less stable, but will have enormous potential upside if you end up being a great trader. Unfortunately the skills aren't highly transferable, so you might have a tough time finding a role outside finance should you eventually decide to pursue something else.

 

Thanks for your input Slippery. Yes, I program in both OOP and scripting. I am not ready for big tech data yet tho I know its a trend because it generates alpha.

 

Appreciate Rabe. The way you describe Nomura reminds me of call option. I understand what you mean by trading does not have many transferrable skill. I also heard that it may not be true for complex product or algo / quant trading. is this true?

 

Standard S&T does not involve programming or otherwise technical work - certainly, if you're a trader who can program, you may find processes that you wish to make more efficient by developing code, but the role itself will not improve your knowledge of statistical analysis/software/etc...

Quant trading is an entirely different world from S&T; if this were Nomura's quant group I'd strongly recommend that. In some quant groups, the trading role is essentially operations, whereas in others, traders double as researchers. In the latter case, certainly the transferrable skills would be numerous; in the former, not so much.

 

Managed to gathered more information here:

NMR pays more than BLK. (I guess its trader role) and they are expanding.

BLK got opportunities to be in PM(some friends of my friends did the transition)

Any thoughts?

 

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