Recent content by bluechimp

Hi Ilya. Welcome back and congratulations on the Data Analyst job. Just to comment on your paragraph above: NO. Seriously. I should send this paragraph to my Russian Lit friends from college (few are trading, by the way!) and see their response. I don't have much opinion on what is the optimal...

Truth is, if you start in Asia, mobility will be limited within Asia. If you have experience making markets in the fastest growing regions in the world, your manager would be nuts to move you back to NY/LDN. At least I wouldn't do it if I'm your manager -- competition for talent in Singapore and...

I'd say that among Princeton student, the majority seeks to obtain trading / risk-taking positions, and not necessarily quant jobs. Are people smart enough to become quants? Yes, I believe so. When you have valedictorians from Ecole Polytechnique and Tsinghua/Beida in your class, you know...

Placement rates are one thing, but ideally you'd also want to know the quality of the placements. I'd argue that placing 100% of your students in back office roles is less impressive than 80% placement in exclusively front-office positions. So, this sort of normalization should be kept in mind...

Getting paid to learn > Paying to learn

Right. Thanks for the answers. (They're quite telling, really.) To put it bluntly, I believe the major areas of growth in Asia will be corporate finance (i.e. traditional investment banking activities) and flow trading. Exotics will eventually catch up, but the current low transaction volumes...

People would be able to give better advice if you elaborate on: What are you doing currently in Singapore? What are you looking to do in another job? What specifically about the city that tires you down? What do you look for in a city? What specifically do you mean about not being challenged...

You guys would be surprised. There are convergence trends between traditional IBD roles and quants. Among others, I think Citi's Financial Strategies Group and J.P. Morgan's Capital Structure Advisory Services can be quite academic/technical. Check out the following job description, courtesy of...

I feel bad for the thread starter that the topic went off a ridiculous tangent. All this debate about minute details -- it reminds me sometimes why I want to bite off the heads of quants I've worked with. If I have to choose between a Chinese, Russian, American, or [insert country] quant --...

Most definitely that can be your goal, but to temper the argument: 5 year forecasts are rarely accurate. If anyone had told me that I'd be doing EM distressed investing, six years removed from my MFin education, when I was nicely tucked in Princeton -- I would've never believed it. But that's...

Ahh. I miss hanging out with my liberal arts friends.

Sad? Here, have a cookie.

Whatever you do, just don't say you're looking for a hedge fund internship at Carlyle.

I believe the expected reward in your relentless pursuit is not commensurate with the amount of time you need to invest -- even if it's just to gain the firm's (fleeting) attention. You should just focus on getting into a good college now, and then build upon that.

A recent Princeton grad ('10) joined Kepos over the summer. He is having a blast. (Read: they're hiring, I think).