Q&A: Quantitative Analyst/Trader - Career Path, Technical Topics, Education

Question

Ask me anything in regards to the quant finance space (buy side, sell side, career advice, compensation, education advice, derivative concepts, risk management, quant trading/research, etc.). I will give you the best answer to my abilities or direct you in a possible path to answer your question.

I have 2 years experience in derivatives pricing on the sell side after completing a masters in financial engineering / financial mathematics / quantitative finance from a top 5 school. Undergrad in pure math from a non-target.

Transcending · Accepted Answer

For the most part, I will say traders on the sell side tend to stay as traders for their careers, few will rise up to the ranks as PMs on the buy-side given the different skillsets. Sell-side traders merely execute trades for the clients, understand flows, and are good at interpreting current market events for their product. They are not in the business of taking large amounts of risk and strategizing directionally for a horizon longer than a few days.

Transcending · Answer

My pleasure. I am here as a resource. Congrats on the new role, that sounds very interesting. Can you send the link to your forum?

From what I understand about structuring, it is more geared to tailoring a product to a client's desired payoff or exposure. So with respect to volatility, you might could be looking at anything like options, variance/vol swaps, forward vol, vol of vol, VIX/vol ETNs, or any structured product related to the volatility of an instrument or index.

Transcending · Answer

Everyone's case for getting into an FE program will be different, but like I mentioned earlier in this post, be good at the four pillars (see my above answer on combination of math, stats, programming, and finance). Expose yourself to any projects that is markets related, which will demonstrate your interest to people admitting these candidates. For instance I did a stock market prediction project involving programming, which at the time I had no idea what I was actually doing, but it conveyed interest.

Transcending · Answer

There's no silver lining trick. To be a great quant or trader you need to consume. By consume, I mean learn everything and read a lot of market articles or research papers.

To be a good quant there are, what I like to call, 4 pillars: math, statistics, computer programming and finance. No one starts of strong in all four areas. Everyone will have one they prefer over the other. It's about how well you develop your weaknesses that make you good. I had a math background and sucked in coding but now I can price exotics in Python using simulation or other fancy stuff.

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Q&A: Quantitative Analyst/Trader - Career Path, Technical Topics, Education

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Q&A: Quantitative Analyst/Trader - Career Path, Technical Topics, Education

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