Python/VBA Skills in S&T
I see a lot of folks talk about how valuable knowing some python skills can be as a junior on the trading floor. What are some tangible tasks/skills that I should be comfortable with in python and/or vba for purposes of a summer internship? Regression analysis? Manipulating/Filtering dataframes? ARIMA or other time-series analysis? The more granular you can be, the better.
Really depends on the desk, so best to ask around after you accepted an offer.
VBA or python to automate spreadsheets is enough to be a value add for most desks. Simple things like copy pasting from different files, processing data, formatting reports etc.
More quanty desks, usually on the trading/structuring/research side would make more use of more complex stuff, but it’s pretty product specific, and what coding you do as an intern will depend on how Mathy your manager and senior colleagues are.
Once you know where you’re placed pick a textbook or too and try to program some simple examples from it.
The first comment sums it up great. I would add that no matter what desk your on, being able to automate a task is huge.
Whether it’s an email that sends out a report or a script that scrapes market data, understanding the fundamental programming building blocks is very important (variables, if/else statements, for loops, etc..)
If you have no programming experience at all, I’d start with VBA as almost all trading desks have tools written in that. There are tons of free learning sources out there so a simple google search is all you need to do.
I wouldn’t spend weeks of your time reading books.. once you understand the basic building blocks (mentioned above), I would try to automate or create a script of your own.
Here’s a practical example:
While this is a simplified example, it will teach you a lot of fundamental programming logic. Also, If you do choose to start with VBA try to avoid using the “record macro” button as that does the programming for you.
If you can add value like this on a desk for a summer internship, the odds of the desk brining you back on full time is good (Atleast in my experience).
Good luck!
This is absolute gold, thank you boss!
Quoted because I plan to take a VBA class this fall (returning to school).
The CC I’m attending offers VBA as a specialized class.
A lot of the firms I’m looking to apply to would like to have people know Python or VBA. Most of their applications do not have any experience.
Thank you for this post, this is really useful as planning to spend some of my downtime over next couple of months brushing up on VBA/Python before starting SA in June. Q re record macro functionality within VBA - good idea to practice familiarising myself with what the outputs look like using record macro as a way of starting, before moving onto writing myself without? Only having just started and not entirely sure what the notation should exactly read like. Would appreciate any tips or steer here - thanks!
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