Articles

In this article, one of Quantnet members describes a typical day in his former life as an Interest Rates Developer at a Major Investment Bank (MIB), FO and MO spreadsheets support. He is now employed at another MIB. 4:50 AM - I do not want to wake up, can someone please break this evil clock alarm!!! 5:15 AM - I’m on the train and going to job 6:30 AM - Finally I’m here and first thing I check if all publishing systems are up. Looks like couple of indicator on my alarm monitor that I wrote...

In his new book, Scott Patterson argues that quantitative risk managers nearly destroyed Wall Street in a series of disasters going back to 1987. But that is far from the whole truth. The quant revolution in academic finance began about 60 years ago, and it came to Wall Street in force about 30 years ago. It has been blamed for every disaster since, which is not entirely unfair. Most of the innovations during this period have been quant-linked, and in many cases were pure quant. That means...

Remember in Hamlet when King Claudius discovers Laertes has been buying naked CDS protection on Danish government bonds? Polonius, the royal treasurer, fears it will increase funding costs and bring on a fiscal crisis. The king laughs off the threat with the famous line, “There's such divinity doth hedge a king, that treason can but peep to what it would, acts little of his will.” Few modern CEOs or heads of state have demonstrated the same wisdom and courage. Instead we are likely to hear...