Quant trading best MSc option
I'm a final year bachelor of engineering student in the UK (good Russell Group uni for engineering and semi-target for finance) and have an offer from Imperial for their MSc Finance course. I was originally interested in straight S&T trading, but have become more interested in quant trading.
Instead of taking the Imperial MSc Finance, I could stay at my uni and complete a master's of engineering, or, I could apply to Imperial for their MSc Mathematics & Finance or MSc Applied Mathematics - but I would have to reject the MSc Finance offer so couldn't keep that as a backup.
Does anyone have any advice on whether a master's of engineering at a good uni is better than an MSc in Finance at Imperial for quant trading / general S&T? My view is that engineering > finance but Imperial > my uni. Any other advice would be appreciated thanks :)
Current student on the course who secure a trading internship at BB there. Yes MSc Maths and Finance course is primarily targeted for sellside quant role, but it doesn't have to be. Coming from a quant finance background certainly give you strong edge when applying to trading. This becomes very true for exotics desk where traders are mostly from math background, think barrier, asian option, variance swap etc., it would be impossible to trade them if you can't even understand how to price them and where the risks are. When you mention quant trading, this is quite a big area. There are sell-side e-trading (or some banks call it systematic trading), where the focus of the job is more on optimal execution, price impact modelling, less so on signal researching. And there are prop trading shops (e.g. Optiver/Flow/IMC/DRW) where people love to call themselves quant trader, but it is just OMM/ETF MM. And to get there it doesn't matter what courses you take but you really just need to be very smart to pass maths interview. At least I would argue the Imperial MF course could very likely secure you a place at sellside, presumably desk quant, and you would have a strong alumni network to help you land elsewhere should you change your idea of career thereafter.
That's really helpful, thanks for the in-depth reply!
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