GS Strats Internship Superday Questions

Know what you would advise clients to do after and before the Obama election... i.e. such stocks like energy, etc. Additionally, think about the 'mass affluent' and other types of clients that GS has to deal with in the future.

Portfolio theory, the quantitative stuff involved in constructing a portfolio and understanding a client's risk appetite and so on. Clients also like seeing the normal stuff like R squared(s), general stats about their accounts and what would happen if you would add a few mill her or there, or would change your risk appetite to include more equities versus bonds (so a higher risk appetite) in terms of upward pressure and downward pressure, bonds versus equities (so a lower one and thus a lower return). That's the kind of stuff, you're doing the math stuff for constructing the client's pitches, etc. So this involved a lot of regression analysis.

Does anyone know how prestigious this role is ? Pay ? Exit opps ?

How does this role compare with the GS QIS Alpha Research group in terms of pay, prestige, exit ops ?

@"IlliniProgrammer" Any thoughts on the aforementioned queries please ?

Someone asks about prestige and pings me of all people lol. (Fortunately you at least spelled prestige correctly)

GS Strats is like LSE or CMU or Caltech. Smart people in finance know it has a lot of smart programmers who are also tough as nails (the guys in S&T have to deal with NYC brokers; the guys in IM deal with GSAM) It does not have the name brand of DE Shaw, Rennaissance, Citadel, or 2 Sigma, although a lot of those firms will hire from there.

If you want prestige, don't go into the quant world. That's really for banking and PE. A firm like Rennaisance or DE Shaw gives you credibility, but you always land the job on the technicals and past accomplishments. In this field there are few barriers separating you from a college senior from Baruch or even BMCC who published a first name machine learning paper or algorithms paper in the JACM. In fact we commonly find that our best hires come from those kinds of backgrounds.

GS Strats can get you into this business. I became a stat arb guy through a similar route.

Just be aware:

-NYC treats quant developers... without the respect they deserve. You are sort of front office, but not really. (Even though half the desk would shut down and brokers would run around like chickens with their heads cut off if they lost their analytics, and only about 30 other people on the street could replace you if you quit tomorrow) -This is true at GSAM according to people who have worked there. Strats do a lot of work and get no respect in Strats IM. -This may be less true in Strats IBD, although The team's MD strikes me like the lady from Devil Wears Prada meets the French professor who thinks Girsanov's Theorem is something that everyone learned in Kindergarten. I hear one thing from GS's recruiters about the work there, but I hear another thing from actual employees. But my genuine take is that Strats IBD is FO, if a little crazy to work in.

If you want prestige, Strats is a pretty silly place to go. I would argue the same of even stat arb. It is a place to work on some pretty cool cutting edge projects and tackle a lot of business problems as a coder. If you simply want to have a prestigious job, do IBD or consulting or maybe VC or PE if you can get it. Or work for Palantir or Google. Quant finance does not have the cool kids, and the day we get the cool kids is the day we stop making money.

But it is a way to learn a lot about the industry, how large analytics projects work, how brokers think (you get a lot of candid moments with them that don't always even happen with other people on their team) and to break into HFT, Stat Arb, Risk Management, or maybe Big Data consulting. Most if the projects are pretty cutting edge but also a lot smaller in scale so you're not building some small aspect of the autocomplete tool on Google search. You also learn a lot about yourself and what you're good at and what you absolutely suck at. That is life on the trading floor in general, and you get that experience.

Geeks really need to quash this "prestige based on where I work" obsession. Prestige, if we have it, is something we create and keep rather than acquire by association. GS Strats S&T is not for the faint of heart IMO. Strats IBD is not for the lazy and Strats IM is not for the proud. And GS Strats is not a place for the prestige obsessed in general (OK maybe IBD). Neither is the quant life.

That's my 20 cents. Back to my rusty honda and R session.

I respectfully disagree on this one. Analytics code is designed to be agile and built quickly and come with a 95% SLA- it just has to sort of work by Friday. A decade later, IT will come along and put it into production. Traders know this, and understand the reliability trade-offs. Analytics guys also understand that breaking is infinitely better than a bad number. We are obsessive about the equations and testing the numbers that come out and a little more lackadaisical about what breaks the system.

The code for executing trades gets built by IT- never by analytics, has the size and scope of a military project, has an obsessive level of testing, and has a massive time/cost overrun like nearly every IT project. The analytics code gets written quickly and either proves itself to work or quickly proves itself to be horribly broken.

If traders wanted perfect information before making a decision, nobody would trade. If analytics just helps the traders be right on 55% of trades, they are doing their jobs.

Also, @IlliniProgrammer, you're a pretty smart guy, but at some point you will understand that preftige is not a misspelling of prestige, but a different word altogether. I'm not a huge fan of either, but that doesn't mean they don't have distinguishable meanings.

(In reality I think there's a lot of trolling that uses this term. At best it is a word that says look at those people from private schools who think they're better than us. At worst- and I suspect just as often- it is a small minority of people from those private schools being d-bags. If I can introduce the "whoops someone forgot to update their typeset!" or "oops you misspelled it" memes, either of those kills both dumb uses of the word. And I'm being just as genuine in claiming it's not a word as the person using it.

Now we can have more useful discussions like "Ferragamo Loafers at a public high school?" Or "Which offers me more prestige: GS Tobacco and Beverage IBD vs. Rhodes Scholarship." Or "Rolex vs. Ferrari")

So in terms of future exit options, which is better ? GS QIS Alpha Research Strats or GS PWM Strats. The thing that I find most startling about the former is everyone whom I could find working for this group on LinkedIn have been working there for years and have not really moved - Is that coz the role's great or coz they have no exit options and are kinda stuck ?

I don't have the profile to apply for IBD or Private Equity roles but having heard work descriptions from some of my friends about the work they do and their calibre, I have no doubt I would have done well - but given the selective nature of these roles, I would not even get an interview.

It is perhaps the most overpaid job profile across all possible professions. Minimal value to the society and maximum pay.

Look I have no idea what goes on over there. There are clearly exit options to being a strat. Everything from being a trader to data scientist to a tech consultant to law school and IP law to PM roles.

My guess is that if people stay at GS, it's because it's a pretty chill place to work. I'm also pretty sure that strats is a relatively new team. I don't think it existed 10 years ago.