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still networking..still hustling. 😀

No? Why would I ?

haha this is great.

Buy 100 long bonds and go on vacation.. thats my new trading strategy. Disclaimer: This is not investment advice.

yeah it all depends. there are quant developers i know who get paid 500K + just coding. they dont even know what a tick is.

Algo trading means so many different things now. but most people in general applying for entry level positions have strong math, programming and finance backgrounds and advanced graduated degrees...so there you go.

The base is same no matter what part of the bank you are... unless you are a trader or on a profitable desk the only variation is the bonus. It all depends.. if you are front office.. like say an associate or a VP but dont have your own book than your bonus is dictated by how well the desk has...

this is more entertaining than the market. fed who?

haha you gave me my topic for my masters thesis 8 years ago!

yeah prolly fair statement. in todays climate ... 150-250 range for a VP middle office quant.. makes sense. obviously there are exceptions but that sounds about right to me.

Truer words have never been spoken. I think 200k once you get to VP with bonus at a good bank is prolly the number for most financial engineers. Unless you are a trader at a big sell side bank and making good PnL prop trading or a hedge fund PM you are sitting in the 150-250 range as a...

this is the most bullish season for rates since great depression...you would think the treasury is not gonna issue any more long bonds. lets see how todays fed tone goes. Any less then a strong Dovish hike and we see bear flattening in the curve... i think market is overdone.. and it iwll be...

PM is a very high position. It is the highest position on the buyside and one of the highest positions in the financial world. Getting to that point is tough and requires a lot of large scale views. It's basically like similar progression from an analyst on a trading desk to an MD on a trading...

Economic slowdown.... is there any other definition? vol spike does not mean recession.

You add real value to society. Unless you just want to make more money don't come to this world...there are better things to do. You can probably pull in at entry level 100-150K in a big city at a bank...maybe slightly lower on buyside. if you make it to VP in front office you can get to 250K...

Mostly see that people still talk about programs/etc on this forum.. figured I would try to get a different discussion going. thoughts? market is definitely pricing like late 2019 recession but market has been wrong.

CALPERS, TCW, CAP GROUP, WELLS TREASURY, DODGE & COX, WAMCO some more additions who hire quants/mfes.

It's funny, given how there still isnt much exposure to MFE many employers actually look at this ranking as an evaluation of the program on the resume. There are so many rankings for undergrads MBA etc but i think this is the only MFE one and there is a lot of demand for MFE now across finance...

these ranking threads always get so entertaining every year.

I have been talking to many quants recently for my desk and i have to say that most of them are very well rounded. Strong math, programming and good knowledge of finance. I think all these MFE degrees have changed teh game a bit. Many phDs with MFE's in hte market. It depends on what kind of...

1 week.

stop feeding the trolls. no upside.

Nice topics Ken. here are some more addtion and a bit more topical currently: What drives FRA-OIS spread. Survey of US repo markets how does the fed policy affect the US real curve Survey of business cycles and what real yields usually cause the turn around given slope of the curve of those...

Wow there are so many programs now. Great to see NYU Tandon doing so well.

so just got an additional confirmation ... if u interviewing in even say west coast office and nyc office.. people have been given offers for west coast and then the west coast people waited till nyc was done to wait for a response. Usually HR hold any offers until all interviewing firmwide are...

Well HR would be aware they are interviewing with others so they would let you finish the process. so if you are intervieweing say S&T and say Tech... HR will let you finish the process and let you make the decision if you get both offers.

No need for CFA for quant job but if you are going for buyside and want to focus on more analyst/PM jobs then many shops like to see CFA on your resume.

lol sure. I am not on sell-side anymore. Dont care.

Great piece. Here is my two cents: Regarding the algo trading in sell-side. This is a huge area of growth actually. It is not just market making and electronic trading for clients. That is a big part of it and the best and fastest algorithms are helping banks increase market share. Ex. I...

What do you define as safe universities? Have you got into these universities ? Or safe to get accepted? Or safe to get a job thereafter. Just look at acceptance levels of the universities and decide safe if that is the criteria.

A classic. Maybe someone can do a Part 2.

a lot of front office tools are built in excel / vba.

Nothing is a shoe in. It is all dependent on the person and the drive they have. The connections can be made but converting that into a position is dependent fully on the individual.

I agree with all your points...except this one: 2) i just dont understand the business of taking a paycut for a particular role, unless it is your own startup. I have never heard of a established firm giving a paycut to employees when they move from nyc to say charlotte. A firm offering to pay...

No idea how much they make. I am not sure about the move but i haven't seen many moves of that sort.

No idea how much they make. I am not sure about the move but i haven't seen many moves of that sort.

commodity brokers are middle people between two traders. They facilitate flow between traders from two traders at two different investment banks. You take no risk. It is essentially a pure sales job. You get commissions from the transactions. If you are a good salesperson then it is good...

Job....especially because its relevant trading experience. you can go get further education later. This job will help you get larger trading jobs in future too.

I dont want to give away too much... I am trying to gauge interest from what I have given right now if people would be receptive. I will post an official job posting here if i see that there could be demand. just fYI if it was me starting off from MFE.. i would have jumped on it in a heart...

My other query is that would a bit seasoned person who is in the industry would take a possibly large pay cut (assuming they are making 125-150K to goto 60k) like this to move into trading.

Okay. Lets say several financial companies in a 2 hour drive radius. The probability of the company going to zero is basically zero. In terms of established... lets say it is the biggest in its sector (so assume if it was hedge fund, it would be one of the largest hedge fund)... and location...

Obviously assuming ViSA is not an issue. If you start as an analyst on any Tier 1 trading desk and you crush it and if you become director you can make 7 figures. I just don’t don’t how many people are getting front office jobs out of MFE that easily. This is a back room pass to that kind of job...

Really ? Surprising . That’s what i was curious off... a full director trader job on Wall Street still pays 7 figures if you are half decent. I would think someone who has an upside of making it to a 7 figure salary from 60K in 5-6 years is a profitable trade. Has it become very easy now to...

This would not be a sponsorship. Green card minimum let’s assume. I want to get some ideas of who would be interested... with the caveat that there is no ViSA sponsorship

Would fresh graduates from MFE programs ever be open to getting 50-60K in salary(Almost no bonus but cost of living is 30% of NYC) at a NON NYC location front office job with the upside of becoming a trader in 2-3 years and larger compensation thereafter. Curious what current students or recent...

what kind of electronic trading is it? is it algorithmic trading or electronic execution and what sector? Is it part of the desk or developer or ?

nice

Compensation is very varied between sell-side and buy-side. So from sell-side pay upto Director in front office as a trader is mostly structured. Analysts coming out of college on a trading desk could look at 80-90K entry level and 10-20K bonus first year. As an associate you are looking at...

Joined quantnet around 2010. Went to baruch for MFE. Started off in risk management at RBS and then moved into trading at TD for last several years in fixed income. Will soon be moving to a west coast money manager leading a treasuries and tips trading team. I need to spend more time on QN...

yeah. haha i obviously exhausted all of google first before posting here.

Hey guys Maybe a trivial question but... Anyone know a way I can call functions from specific packages into excel? I am trying to see if I can call functions from this package: GitHub - imanuelcostigan/dataonderivatives: Easily source publicly available data on derivatives in excel/vba. Is...

I am an inflation bond trader at TD securities in NY. I was at RBS before after grad from Baruch MFE. 2 students from BaruchMFE were traders at RBS when I was there. One was a swap trader (recently left to start his own hedge fund) another on the swaption desk got promoted and runs the whole...

what is a "quant" trader? o_O ... i am a rates trader for a large bank and i use quantitative tools to aide in that.

Haha not sure i even am considered a quant. But your class def put on the track to where i am now ;)

Not sure. I will find out.

I will be on the Panel at the next How I became a quant panel at NYU on Friday. It is organised by International Association of Quantitative Finance. Come by and say hello if you are around!

wow this is amazing. Thanks Ken. Going to really help out people . This is top 3 things I have seen on this website.

Boom!! It's been 2 years already since the last one.. dammn. Time flies by.

I will double up on that. Always helps to have experience. Relevant experience.

haha I said job! not a finance job. :((( being on a board is a job too.

i beg to differ... i am sure Queen of England could get a job somewhere if she wanted....

Can you show some placement stats of the MFE program?

What makes you say that about GS? Also I would love to know some employment statistics for past graduates since you are offering information?

Just FYI I recently left my position at a BB/large investment bank. Before I left we started the interview process so that I could train the person. During the interview process we specifically made sure we picked people from NY programs. We had applicants from Carnegie Pittsburgh and we...

It helps... You need to have a base of other skills and compliment it with academic papers. I can definitely say it was a great point of conversation for me during interviews to talk about my academic papers.

Wow... This blows my mind. I just showed your comment to a senior VP in my department who is a Columbia MFE graduate. He literally had tears from his eyes after laughing so hard from reading that comment. Thank you for the entertainment.

Is this a joke? The only comparisons for Baruch MFE that should ever be done is against NYU, Carnegie or Princeton. I work with two Columbia MFE's (their best program), and they both wish they had gone to Baruch instead. They found no jobs upon graduation and found their current jobs where I...

As Ken said.. it depends. If you work on a cash desk you might no see much quantitative stuff other than maybe some PCA depending on where you work. If you work on a derivatives or exotics desk then you can get involved in some heavy quant. I worked on a swaptions desk and it was hull white...

.........this is not wall street oasis

Wow go Baruch! Great to see Thailand on there too. This competition is truly turning global!

Depends what product you work on. If you are covering cash products then even elementary math and some knowledge of time series can be sufficient. It's the non linear products where financial engineering gets fun. So if you cover options etc it is usefull to know a little bit of stoch calc and...

You have to at least be able to use VBA excel. Structurers and many trading desks at banks will just use excel vba for their work.

Definitely. Here is another position for a quant: http://www.insightstrategygroup.com/who_we_are/careers/

AD companies are the new hot spot. Check out jobs at AppNexus for example.

Universities already take in 2-3 PhD's in finance max in a year. Even the top schools take in only 2 sometimes. The public universities have cut down their PhD's due to federal funding for the programs. PhD in finance and accounting are the two hardest PhD's to get into. If you goto a decent...

Get a job on a market risk or trading desk covering Rates. Rates/govvy desks cover inflation products. TIPS and TIPS asset swaps are the big products traded by banks. That's probably the only way to get good at those products. There are no books on them. TIPS market is very interesting but there...

GO LIONS! High Draft pick! lol

Madden 13 is good too. If anyone has Ps3 and wants to get pwned in CoD...madden 12 or 13...uncharted...ncaa football 13.. add me. ID: yourwifesname

Yeah. Anything and everything. Trying to break the world record on boxing a dozen pears within 3 seconds.

Boxing and lots and lots of Call of Duty Black ops 2. Any belgian beer once in a while.

Yup. Thats one of the things we were told during my first class. There are lots of strategies apparently.

I played Croquet last spring for the first time. Other than the bowtie, the rest of the outfit is pretty much what everyone was wearing. Interesting "sport". Great networking spot.

Yes. I still wear the same beige suit. Looks like not everyone thinks like you. I have a colleague who wears a pink stripe bowtie and white shoes to client meetings and closes almost everytime.

It's not always about what you wear but how you present what you are wearing.

Wow... went through the threads and learn't a lot! This is pretty awesome. Thanks Ellen and Andy for setting this up.

Goto the American Finance Association website.. there are positions for PhD's there who want to work in the industry instead of academia. Many a times they put down the emails of their recruiter on the website. The positions are usually for full-time but you can email them and ask. They take phd...

Also, FYI when I was in the program at baruch I had a beige no name suit. I wore that to almost every interview. I think it was like $199 for the whole thing from a small store in Canada. I wouldn't have ever been able to afford $500 for a suit.

Charles Tyrwhitt is legit. Look into them. I just filled my wardrobe with their stuff.

lol only 5 people are going? ... I will come. It's been a while.

The seminar was great. Even though I don't work in regulatory related area directly it affects my work indirectly and found the information very useful. I mentioned a few things like the new Basel document that was "hot of the press" at my weekly meeting at work today and I got lots of praise...

So this should be interesting tmrw especially given what happened with JPM yesterday. Hopefully we can have a few minutes to talk about what exactly happened...why...and possible implications.

I would have to agree with the above. I almost went into the corporate finance quant area during my internship time. It is actually kinda cool. To give you an example of some exotic deal that one of these teams can do : Say a company is going to open a new factory and they take a loan for it...

No clue.

Yes, he has 10+ years on the street algo trading for BB's and a PhD from MIT.

Worldquant is pretty solid place. One of my friends is about to start as a portfolio manager there soon at their Old Greenwich location. They are looking for like 10-15 people right now.

Haha. yeah.. I heard she was rolling on the ground.

Thanks for everyone who came out. A lot bigger turn out than I expected. Hope you all liked the beats!

Tonight!! come by for some good music and to see some familiar/non familiar faces.

Can you explain this further? How would futures time series between a 10 year and 30 year for example help me find the net basis between the 10 yr current futures and the cash bond that is CTD... ? Also.. remember.. net basis... not gross basis.

Anyone have any net basis (treasury bond/futures) time series lying around by any chance? Any maturity will do. Bloomberg is of no help.

Bump. Tmrw!

I graduated in December and the returns I have already seen (salary/bonus/knowledge compared to peers) on my investment (tuition/etc) have been enourmous IMO.

Sorry just updated. April 11th.

Hey all, just curious if people were down to meet up ? I will be DJing at a lounge in New York City.. East Village. http://maps.google.com/maps?um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=nightingale lounge&fb=1&gl=us&hq=nightingale lounge&hnear=0x89c2a164b2c7bc0b:0x8743868b9c34b76e,Stamford...

I think Baruch has the best return on investment out of all the MFE programs...

Ah. That time of the year.

Should be interesting and informative. Just registered.

Nice

Anyone from here going?

Ed Thorp or Black/Scholes/Merton.

http://gawker.com/5883684/the-awful-cover-letter-all-of-wall-street-is-laughing-about

They won't take you as analyst. Analyst is almost always strictly for undergrads. Apply for the associate position, you have a better shot of getting it.

http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2012/02/02/n_risk_management_quants.cnnmoney/

That's right. There are rules at many banks with bonus. If you take it you can't leave, etc etc. But most of what you said is how it is, just the months might be different at different banks.

Haha. Maybe 1 in 100's? It is VERY VERY LOW and close to impossible to publish in these journals. The turnaround time is also 2-3 years at minimum. If you go for the elite journals like econometrica and journal of political economy (black scholes was published here) , it is even longer.

Is your wall street experience just the S&T internship?

I just used resources from work and the rest I just did myself. I did have to learn quite a bit of standard accounting stuff to do it so maybe go over that. It all depends on the project. I had to project gas prices(just built a monte carlo simulation for that) and try to get an estimate of...

Bonus announcements have already gone out a long time ago at most firms.

I have done project finance modelling. Natural gas pipelines for a large midstream company. What do you want to know?

oh... lose.

Oh I 110% mean't it. I want the rematch and want to see them loose to Giants again. I mean I would have loved to see them loose to Lions but that will prolly happen next year.

It will be more fun to see them loose in the superbowl.

hhelll yeah! Although my team isn't playing i would love to see a giants and patriots superbowl rematch.

The original quants were all front office. Now they are everywhere.

Good to see more universities getting into talking to potential applicants through this medium.

I don't know about how to get into that area of banking with just engineering degree. Most of them have finance/accounting backgrounds... or engineers with MBA's.

Do you mean investment banking .. like banking? M&A.. etc?

lol That was funny. It is hard to get in with just an engineering degree since all your competition will have an additional finance related degree.

I saw the title and thought we were going to have a christmas party. :(

Winning!

I like places with people...

Public house seems to classy and expensive. Since several are probably students should keep it a bit lower.

Where would you guys prefer? Walking distance from Grand Central plz.

Haven't done this in a while. Anyone up for next Friday?

i just got some random stuff. some clothes... a midi keyboard to produce dubstep and electro house music( i know...) One of those shiatsu massaging pillows.. The one from brookstone. Going to look for deals on Cyber Monday

Koooooooooooooool aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid

FX trader in investment bank/hedge fund, what do they do? --- At investment banks they make markets with their clients. They will buy what their client is selling and visa versa. The money they make is mostly of fees. It is purely market making business with a very quick inventory turnover rate...

This is definitely the first rule of bonus which is almost always broken and leads to nothing but problems.

started a while back.

GT-R recorded a faster lap time at Nurburgring. Style and comfort is a subjective measure. And look at the costs of GT-R and SLR. GT-R is better in every spec and less than half the price. Anyways, I need to put down my past automotive engineer in me and focus on pricing these berms.

electronics and clothes.

What websites are people looking for deals on? I always like Amazon.

Lol I don't think you know what a Nissan GT-R is. I would pick it over a Porsche 911 Turbo as majority of car junkies would.

I would get the bmw if i get a good deal! Not a gt-r :(

already looked at it. Test drove it. Don't like it. I don't like porsche in general. Actually... Since this is a "wishlist" ... It's NISSAN GT-R

BMW 3 Series Coupe

Class warfare!

This is nothing new. Taleb has been saying that forever now.

hahahhaa. Ok . Tim Hortons interview. That's awesome.

lol That's not creative at all.

They don't call your references until the background check time usually, or right before offer. So if you're about to recieve offer from 10 companies and you're in the final stage then yes they might call your references.

LoL I would not leave my job for madison ave.

I would have to repeat what is said above... S&T programs usually target undergrad programs almost always. For associate they target only MBA programs of top business schools. It is very hard to get into an S&T program from an MFE. It is possible to get into a quant program in S&T but not the...

^^ haha Yeah. It was funny when he gave the presentation for that. Good laughs.

Go Lions! Go badgers!

I would second what BBW said.

Whatever I am willing to share is on my LinkedIN. I should mention that before moving to this job, I did work on average 12 hours a day (during my internship) in the previous department (same company).

I have great hours right now. 8:30 to 5:30. :) Sometimes 6..

Eat em up Tigers! Eat em up! All the way to the WORLD SERIES!

Wow they have really changed things this year.

I think we are confusing securitization with structuring.

RIP Steve Jobs

R.I.P. Steve Jobs.

GO TIGERS!! GO LIONS!! GO DETROIT!

Companies tell you unguaranteed first year bonus at time of offer? Not any company I know off.

We report sign on bonus.. not unguaranteed bonus like berkeley. I should have specified. Thanks for the post. Average First Year Guaranteed/Unguaranteed year-end bonuses, housing/transportation and other compensations: $56,705 http://mfe.berkeley.edu/careers/placement.html

The other schools have similar records (from whats displayed on their websites). Baruch (disclaimer : my school) posted 95K average/median(we don't report bonus)... just 5K lower...which is around the standard. 95-115K is what associates get depending on the bank. But anyways... I never said...

False. The 158K is with the sign on bonus in it..not 158K PLUS $21K. $150K is very standard associate position at banks(sign on bonus included). There is nothing special here. It's the standard.

I have used Interactive Broker before. The API is decent and is flexible in terms of what language you want to use. I used it at a hedge fund i was working at. They do have the tighest spreads out there especially in options. I use ThinkorSwim now (only 4 brokers are allowed by my firm). IB is...

LIONS!!! BUDDY!!! YEAHH!!! Great win by the Bills too.

Footballll!!

The top 3 finance journals are.. Journal of Finance... journal of financial economics...and review of financial studies.. these are the three elite. But.. the really top papers...nobel prize worthy.. goto American Economic Review and Journal of Political Economy (black scholes was published...

Well I don't know your situation but it's always good to mention you're intervieweing elsewhere. You should mention companies within the industry because otherwise it won't show your commitment. But if it is a quant position I guess it might not matter if you say tech companies...

Well I don't know your situation but it's always good to mention you're intervieweing elsewhere. You should mention companies within the industry because otherwise it won't show your commitment. But if it is a quant position I guess it might not matter if you say tech companies...

it seems like they have changed things now... It used to be first round phone interview which consisted mostly of financial and math brain teasers..the 2nd round used to be programming, stats, math, finance questions...third round "fit" interviews with senior management. Or atleast that was the...

Since when did PhD topics become the choice of the student... lol

Your salary will be based on your past salary or your work experience and education and NOT on what the "expected" salary is for the position. The expected salary can be 80K but if you experience and education puts you in 55K..that is what you will get. The verbal offer always comes before the...

The methodology definitely is a huge improvement and seems relatively fair. Going forward hopefully programs can provide more data and the methodology can be refined even further.

haha oh man. You put a counter for the ranking. lol

I used Kindle DX during my last semester. It was very convinient.

Don't feed the trolls.

lol "Unguaranteed year-end bonuses" has been added.

Or so I have heard....

Traders do hide wins too. For rainy days.

Do MBA not MFE for banking. 

calm down perry

I am shocking the price for the futures and yields for the swap rates. That's just how the software (homemade) does it. There are simulated FRA's used in the 30-60 yr range. The idea is to stress and re-price the swaptions portfolio. I will try to use FRA's all through, although I don't see it...

Thanks for the detailed reply Bob. So I basically have the same problem that your images showed in the file. I am using 6 prices from Futures at the short end... and then the 5 yr 7yr and 10yr swap rates to build the curve. I apply non-parallel shocks to all the future prices and the swaps using...

Shifts are along the whole curve, but it's non-parallel.

bob Hey bob.. what could be some issues when you do non parallel shifts on a curve that is built using cubic spline interpolation or any spline interpolation.

Aren't you suppose to be somewhere in London or Spain right now Ken... haha

Soo true....

Hello Neohio... I got your message but figured I would post here. There are many ways to find out about internships. The best option is to go to a university that has a good placement system. Incase this is not the situation...here are some tips.. The first way is probably going to the...

Go Lions!

Just got the Motorola photon 4g. Its unreal. Bye bye blackberry.

Oh man. This is just awesome.

lol i am in my backyard in canada grilling up a bbq in the nice sunny weather and then off to patriots vs lions. gooooooooodtimes. be jealous all!