[R-SIG-Finance] Career/Educational Advice - First Post

[Julian Lee]

Hi guys,

thanks for your input.

I understand that the market is quite bad at the moment. I hadn't got
the news about congress not approving the USD 700billion bailout plan
when i pressed the 'send' button. but i think demand for quants will
improve when market picks up.

and if things will take some time to improve, all the move i should
consider going back to grad school and pick up new skills.

some comments to Ravi's email

> 5) It really depends on which side of the business you join. Esentially
> there are profit centres that directly bring in revenue, and cost centres
> that are a necessary evil. The producers of revenue always get better
> treatment, salary and perks. There are quant roles at both levels, front and
> back office. More and more quants in banks and funds have become labelled
> support. They have sad lives

just an interesting observation. some bioinformaticians/computational
biologists end up that way too.

and david's piece on open source

"Consultants should consider selling services based on open source soft-
ware to their clients. The asking price for the use of the (excellent)
Clarifi backtesting system is $40,000 per user per year. A consultant
providing a similar, if lower quality, set of tools based on open source
code would be able to undercut Clarifi by 90% and still make a hand-
some living."

Imagine doing for both bioinformatics and finance problems....

Paul DeBruicker,
thanks. will check out those websites.

Thanks for your comments.
cheers
julian


On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 2:48 AM, Ravi Kalia <ravkalia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Julian,
> I've worked in quant positions and in other areas of the finance companies
> (banks, funds, consultancies).
> Here is what my thoughts are:
> 1) There is no defined position of a quant, quant team or so that applies
> across the industry. It depends on the company you work for and the
> experiences you get in a particular role.
> 2) Investment banks and hedge funds have traditionally been the ivy league
> of finance companies for newly graduated quants. Hence they are very
> arrogant in who they choose, many but not all PhDs, masters and smart
> undergrads could do quant work, but only a select group are hired. Because
> of the huge pool of talent applying, these organisations can be very picky
> in who they hire.
> 3) They like to keep the quant blind to the business implications of what
> they do. In that way trade secrets are not lost and you can be easily
> replaced.
> 4) Economists can do most things but programme, expect at some level an
> economist to be the guy in charge.
> 5) It really depends on which side of the business you join. Esentially
> there are profit centres that directly bring in revenue, and cost centres
> that are a necessary evil. The producers of revenue always get better
> treatment, salary and perks. There are quant roles at both levels, front and
> back office. More and more quants in banks and funds have become labelled
> support. They have sad lives.
> 6) Make sure that you enjoy substantial programming of mathematical
> algorithms for senior staff. Many quants are being asked to demonstrate the
> validity of their results.
> 7) The market is pretty bad right now.
> 8) There are a non-programmer class of quants who sit and structure
> complicated financial contracts and then re-engineer them into their
> constituent parts. They do esoteric maths, which is a bit like the emperors
> new clothes and make huge fees from hoodwinking regulators and clients.
> 9) Talk to many people. There are lots of opinions out there.
> 10) If you're very good , you don't need a PhD or masters, just an interest
> and programming acumen.
>
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 6:22 PM, Julian Lee <julianlhe at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I thought that this would be an excellent place to post a question on
>> career/educational advice for a bioinformatics specialist who is
>> interested in stepping foot into the world of quants. However, if the
>> moderators feel that this post is inappropriate, and perhaps out of
>> topic, feel free to delete it.
>>
>> Before i begin, i probably ought to introduce myself. I completed my
>> undergraduate degree from the National University of SIngapore in the
>> field of COmputational Science Specializing in Life Science. My main
>> areas of study was engineering mathematics, programming, and molecular
>> biology/biochemistry/structural biology. My first job was at a local
>> polytechnic teaching science and mathematics to first year students. I
>> then moved to National Cancer Centre as Bioinformatics Specialist,
>> where i specialize in the analysis of microarrays, genomic data. Some
>> of you maybe familiar with R. Gentleman's Bioconductor project, and
>> I've been utilizing many of BIoconductor's packages in my work. My
>> main project is in the prediction of chemosensitivity of Gastric
>> Cancer from genomic data. The biologists are currently validating some
>> of my SVM (support vector machine) computer model and if all goes
>> well, i will soon make my first publication!
>>
>> I have been using R for the past 2 years and am quite addicted to it.
>> In playing around with R/Bioconductor, I bumped into Rmetrics and am
>> amazed with the work by Diethelm Würtz and his team of developers.
>> That got me interested in the field of financial
>> engineering/computational finance.
>>
>> Here are some of my questions, (i apologize if there is some
>> over-simplification on my part)
>>
>> 1. I have been looking at some masters graduate programmes and they
>> come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more mathematical (theoretical)
>> than others, while some are computational, ie NYU's mathematical
>> finance program versus CMU's Computational Finance graduate degree. As
>> a quant in the industry, does the content of these degrees matter?
>>
>> 2. How much of open-source technology, R/Rmetrics is being used by the
>> financial industry? Correct me if i'm wrong, but I'm informed that the
>> standard tool for quants is C++ and VBA, with a wee bit of Matlab.
>> There is significant difference among the tools mentioned, but I would
>> like to gauge how much R/Rmetrics has been adopted into the financial
>> industry. Or has this been placed into the field of academia? I ask
>> because I think R/bioconductor had similar problems, most complain
>> about its "user-unfriendlyness", ie lack of GUI, hence difficulty in
>> using it in their work (many resort to Excel)
>>
>> 3. Is it possible for someone to be a quant without any post-graduate
>> training? I've just recently joined this forum, and have learnt quite
>> a bit (i drew my first stock market graph of the KLSE the other day),
>> from the use of Rmetrics. Simply put, can someone be a quant from
>> being and a superb R/Rmetrics user, ie thorough understanding of the
>> functions, when to use them and how to use them etc.
>>
>> Thank you
>> regards
>>
>> julian lee
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Thanks and Regards,
>
> Ravi Kalia
>
> Graduate Officer
> Oxford University Investment and Finance Society
>
> President
> Lady Margaret Hall Middle Common Room
>
> Business Associate
> Oxford Triple Helix
> http://www.oxtriplehelix.com/business-manager.htm
>