Questions from a Prospective Quant
Hello,
Brand new account but have been a lurker at WSO for a while. I am currently a high school senior and am quite interested in going into quant trading or related area. Any insight or wisdom into the following questions would be much appreciated:
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Best Major/minor combinations for an aspiring quant? (Mathematics, Statistics, CS, Econ, Finance?)
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How important is undergrad program?. Will most likely be attending mid-higher tier state school, but definitely not a target school. Will it be possible to break into industry out of UG or will a Masters program be necessary?
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What are the most useful or productive things I should be doing right now. I am currently learning the basics in a variety of areas, ranging from options, order flow and cryptocurrency analysis. I am also learning Java through school and going through a basic Python program. What else should I be doing?
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(unnecessary) Is technical analysis horse-shit or somewhat useful? I got interested in finance and trading through charts and all of the pretty indicators and S/R lines I would see drawn out, but I am beginning to wonder if the whole concept of technical analysis is a sham to siphon money out of retail traders.
Again, any information on any of these topics would be wonderful
Thanks,
Majoring in combinatorics and languages helps. What type of quant trading are you aiming for
Gonna be honest, not exactly sure. I'm in the process of figuring that out. What different types are there? And I've seen combinatorics mentioned a few times in other threads, along with Stochastic calc and some stats courses.
Ah yes I suggest you start from the basics - namely are you more of a fixed income (bond man) or do you gravitate towards equities. Read up the yield curve for fixed income and study the construction of the curve/arbitrage plays on treasury bonds for example. For equities, Black-Scholes and options pricing is always a good introduction. Spend a week to read up on both and let me know, we can talk specifics from there
Are you smart
Would like to think so. School has been a breeze and I pulled a perfect score on ACT somehow.
Are you smart in the sense of mathematics? Or as a linguist like a poet like Frost, or in the artistic sense similar to a Dali who can paint a rhinoceros ever so well. How do you define smart, it’s all relative
Very true. Would say the mathematical sense for myself, numbers and learning has always been easy, but would I struggle with creativity and artistic abilities.
Since OP wants to be a quant, obviously I meant in the artistic sense similar to a Dali who can paint a rhinoceros ever so well
Intern at JS/HRT/FR/CitSec here -
1. Probably Math and CS. Although most quantitative majors are fine. Take Econ/Finance classes if you want. Most quant shops don't really care if you know any prerequisite finance knowledge but it doesn't hurt.
2. Not as important as traditional finance. There are targets like MIT, Harvard, Princeton, etc. roughly in that order but plenty of people break in from state schools. Math/programming competitions and research generally help you stand out. Once you make it to the interview, everyone is equal. Quant interviews are very technical but tend to be quite meritocratic. Plenty of people make it into trading out of undergrad, although most quant research roles are looking for PhDs. Sometimes firms will hire undergrads for quant research though.
3. Probability is by the far the most important thing for interviews. Also know how to program decently well, Python is probably the most useful language if I were to pick one. Other than maybe know regression and some stats knowledge?
4. Mostly nonsense. Some indicators can give some insight but you're not making any long term profit trading off technical indicators. Indicators seem to "make sense" in hindsight but they don't really have any predictive power. If there really was such low hanging fruit available, any potential arbitrage would've already been exploited by quant firms.
Combinatorics is underrated by many. I majored in it along with classical languages, firms like Jane Street actually told me that’s why they picked me for an interview as it was different from the typical candidate. (Disclaimer: I work for a different shop)
The poster above however makes good points ever so well
Thank you sir
Did you read my post above regarding the distinction from fixed income and equities trading. Let me know if you have further questions, always happy to help fellow quants
Pray tell how has your research gone thus far, do tell me
Pray tell how has your research gone thus far, do tell me
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