Quant trading: Talent or competency?
First timer and college freshman here! I'm considering quant trading as a career path and I just wanted to ask this question about if you have good formal training, are you pretty much guaranteed to be decently successful? i.e Is trading more about talent or competency?
Competency- If you receive formal training, you should be able to do reasonable well, like accounting or pediatrician.
Talent- Even if you receive lots of formal training, there's no guarantee you will do well, like pro sports or painting
Like if someone has an undergraduate major in math from a tier 2 target school and gets, say, a masters in financial engineering or financial mathematics from a top program as well, is he pretty much guaranteed to make a decent living? Or is there still a whole lot of uncertainty?
its a mix. you need training to do the basics right, you need talent to come up with something that isn't being done already.
No guaranteed easy way to make big money. You either need to be really talented or really lucky, usually both. Hard work will give you a comfortable life, but you'll never be close to what celebrities make.
I believe talent is just years of solidified hard work and excellent training. Knowledge compounds on itself, so you'll never really catch up to the kids who started programming and math competitions since they were 10.
You should also know quant finance is a big field - there aren't many of these trading positions relative to the number of PhDs trying to break in. In my Math Department, every PhD student has at least considered quant finance because of the money you can make..
btw I think you're measurement of doing well is pretty naive. I can do well in baseball and not be in pro-sports. Just because I don't make it into the MLB and make a basis point of their compensation, doesn't mean I'm not a great baseball player.
Just like how many very very good accountants and lawyers don't always get paid that much. Good salary and Skill can be more independent than you think. A lot of job success is a right place at the right time kind of thing....
Now that I think about it, I think my analogy with pro sports is a pretty bad one. But I think my analogy with being a painter is much better. Like you can have a lot of people who are "technically speaking" very good painters and receive lots of formal training. But success in the world of art seems to be dependent on this arbitrary notion of talent. I could be completely wrong with this though, since I have no experience in visual art, but this is my impression from the outside.
Trading is nothing like painting/art, where "good" is entirely subjective.
Trading success is objective. PNL is measurable, as are various ways to measure risk.
Go to quantnet, even the guy running the site is a math PhD. You'll get detailed answers from practitioners in quant finance
from what i gather about quant jobs, you need to be a really really strong programmer..and of course understanding math/statistics is import too.
The guy who runs Renaissance Technologies doesn't hire anyone with a PhD in anything finance..all his employees have PhDs in physics, math, astrophysics, astronomy, computer science, etc ..
Make sure you absolutely love programming in C++
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