reddit finance what are quant lifestyles like
reddit finance: What are quant lifestyles like ?
Posted in The Life and Quantfinance.
Buy side FI desk Mon-Thursday 12 hour days (8-8) Spend the day building trading/pricing models, test them, reporting functions done at night. A sample day Come in the office at 8am, eat breakfast at my desk and have coffee while catching up on news/market movements/big events fire up all the pricing and trading models, start checking the holdings, making sure we're positioned correctly. Start working on whatever piece of work I have to do, performance attribution on tons of issues to identify better "risk to reward" bets and other spreads that may be profitable. You'll spend your day creating models to do this. Confer with team about days movements (9am - 9:30 am), back to working on the models 12:30, have lunch maybe a quick workout too 13:30 check market, check daily p/l 13:40 back to working on models of the day ~16:00 confer with colleagues on potential trades/plays ~17:00 check days p/l, sign off on reports trade journals etc ~18:00 Conduct macro research/stress test/risk test, continue testing/refining models ~20:00 go home. Putting out random fires at anytime during the day: dealing with sell side sales guys (many of them are idiots), Chasing down unmatched trades, preparing presentations/client reports, Talking to clients Fridays 8-6 Would leave early on friday as I would fly somewhere new every weekend. 2.Quant trading for own book 6:00 am, wake up, hit the gym 7:00 check p/l 9:00 start working on research projects/ while keeping an eye on systems 15:00 stop research and go out and have fun :D Hours are very variable and you do the work whenever you want.... I'm considering going back to a "proper" job, but i'll make less money :(, however the structure of a workplace environment can be good, and I'd probably do something outside of trading so I can run my machines on the side.
#2
I get in around 9 or 9:30 and make sure everything looks like it's running ok. Then I get coffee and water and read the news until my brain wakes up.
Then I work on my projects, usually research or strategy development. I go for lunch around noon.
I come back from lunch and check on pnl, etc, and maybe read stuff from my RSS feed for a bit. Then I get back to work on research.
I usually leave the office at 7, and I rarely work on weekends (occasionally I log in from home to make sure simulations are running correctly so I don't waste a weekend of computation time).
I do high frequency algorithmic trading for an established finance firm (not an investment bank). I have my own book there. I am lucky to have a boss who is more interested in the work I do than the number of hours I am at me desk.
Also I just have an undergraduate degree in math and no master's or phd, but I am only one of two at my firm with this background. It's a lot harder to get the job, but I guess if you went to a really top school, have the right background, and get lucky, it might work out.
I would recommend not doing a MFE program, but instead something more technical/academic, perhaps a masters in CS or operations research. At my firm we generally find that the mfe students aren't technical enough.