/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7480481]

Hedge Funds / Banks / Finance Firms would rather hire economists and accountants over mathematicians any day.

Why? don't these fuckers want to be rich? You think accountants can create algorithmic trade bots? i don't understand.

[Anonymous No.7480787]

>>7480481
You do know the most common degree holders in Quant funds are Physics PhD's right?

[Anonymous No.7480800]

>Hedge Funds / Banks / Finance Firms would rather hire economists and accountants over mathematicians any day.

>economists and accountants
>economists
>accountants

[Anonymous No.7481106]

Quant funds have monopsony power over physics PhDs whereas econ/finance PhDs can choose to work elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.7481113]

>lets all just make tradebots to generate capital while importing virtually everything from a more robust, less whiny part of the world.

[Anonymous No.7481120]

banks make much more money over the phone talking to clients and governments and central banks than they do with le epic stochastic calculus pricing and trading algorithms.


Also, the return on investment of doing a PhD just to become a quant is very low.
You would have been better off simply getting onto an internship then graduate recruitment scheme at undergraduate level and starting in IBD or sales and trading at 21 or 22.

IF you already have a PhD or are part way through your PhD anyway then sure, try to become a quant, but if you're an undergrad thinking "yeah after this I'll study stochastic analysis and asset pricing in grad school and when I have my PhD I'll become a quant and make 300k starting"
then lmao you're a clueless fucking moron.

[Anonymous No.7481130]

>>7481120
>You would have been better off simply getting onto an internship then graduate recruitment scheme at undergraduate level and starting in IBD or sales and trading at 21 or 22.
Well this is just retarded.

Traditional finance and quant finance are too completely different skillsets. If you are a hardcore enough STEM nerd to cut it as a quant, you are almost certainly far too autistic to even make it past the phone interview for an IB job. Those jobs are for frat boys with massive social networks and family connections and middle school level math skills. Similarly if traditional finance is at all intellectually stimulating you have no chance of being able to cut it as a quant, you just can't handle the math.

But yes. Getting a PhD to be a quant is stupid. There are however, applied computational finance/financial engineering masters programs that can give you a start, they are not worth attending past the top dozen or so in the country but honestly if you can't get into a top program you probably aren't smart enough to handle the work.

[Anonymous No.7481202]

>>7481130
Do you want to be young and rich?
Then you will definitely be better starting in IBD or Sales and trading at 21 or 22 than doing a PhD or an oversaturated 'masters in financial engineering' degree afterwards.

> If you are a hardcore enough STEM nerd to cut it as a quant, you are almost certainly far too autistic to even make it past the phone interview for an IB job. Those jobs are for frat boys with massive social networks and family connections and middle school level math skills. Similarly if traditional finance is at all intellectually stimulating you have no chance of being able to cut it as a quant, you just can't handle the math.

that generalisation isn't true often enough to be worth saying.
plenty of the people you will meet who have spent best part the last 10 years writing reports and talking on phones doing 'traditional finance' and making lots of money studied mathematics or physics or other STEM subjects in their undergraduate degree and would definitely had enough mathematical talent to go to graduate school somewhere if that's what they wanted to do, but they decided they wanted to get kudos and make bank instead.


Also you don't need "massive social networks and family connections" to get onto a graduate recruitment scheme anymore. That's so anachronistic. All you need is great grades at a pretty good institution and a CV (resume) showing some position of responsibility e.g. presient or secretary of the college _____ society. Then you'll be pretty likely to get an invite for an interview if you apply for an internship. That's it.

[Anonymous No.7481211]

>>7481130
Furthermore banks, like any other company, usually prefer in house training and selecting for a role than going through the pain of finding someone outside who they've never worked with before.
So even if you wanted to work on the technical side , it would likely be better for you to do an undergrad degree in compterscience and mathematics, get a job on a graduate recruitment scheme at Morgan Stanley or whatever in technology or sales and trading, work there for a small number of years and do their in-house training then say to your boss "hey I'd really like to get into a more quantitative role" at which point your boss says "ok, apply to this training scheme that our stat-arb group does once a year" or "alright, if you complete this program at this institution we'll pay for your tuition" and then you're back in and much more easily and likely with much higher pay since you already have a couple of years experience than if you were a fresh MFE-holder with just a degree.

Either way it's better to get onto graduate recruitment than tryingto do it as a postgraduate