Python in Asset Management...

Before I answer let me give some quick background, given I haven't posted much - - UG in Physics from a decent uni but not Oxbridge/Imperial/Durham (think Southampton/Surrey/Manchester etc.)

• Placement year in Multi-Asset Quant research @ US AM ( AuM >> $2T) - mainly passive shop but worked in the solutions side (i.e. develop indicators etc to sell/OCIO)
• Analyst role in Multi-Asset @ mid size AM (>$300B) in Investment Strat and Portfolio Construction/FO Risk
• Now a Junior PM in Multi Asset at another US AM (large AuM >> $1T)

Over the course of the roles I have held and working with other teams - in my FT roles I primarily work with FI teams within MA , I found the use of Python (and programming more generally) to be shop/team dependent.

It has ranged from being a business critical tool used for everything from data sourcing and cleaning to trading. I have also seen people laugh when you mention using coding for a task (even VBA).

I do not think coding is the holy-grail but from my experience have found it extremely useful, both on desk and to leverage in networking/interviews. For background I am self-taught Matlab/Python/VBA, having studied only in Fortran at university. I think if you can use Excel, Python is relatively easy to pick up the basics without having an understanding of what you are doing. I.e. can pull in data and manipulate it, without knowing what a tuple is for example.

In my current role, we use Python to pull BBG/Other data vendor data using their APIs (a number of the IBs have APIs to pull in data from trading systems etc). We warehouse the data and use Python as our primary analysis tool. Be it developing strategies, the construction of the portfolio, building risk/pnl dashboards etc. We also use it to generate trade instructions. But here i work for a systematic team with some fundamental inputs - dashboards/filtering for example is another way we use python. In previous roles, team dependent we relied exclusively upon Matlab/Python/Excel/VBA .

I think Python ia good one to have on the CV and in my experience has become more popular (but I have only been in industry for 3 years). I have heard stories from UG students that it was seen as a pre-requisite in some cases.

To target your learning in Py/FI etc it is useful to know what type of role (Performance? Research? etc) and current level of understanding.