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I should say, if you can code Matlab already, R will be a piece of cake (conceptually). Through some friends of mine who use it, they *do* often complain that libraries often break with updates etc, so practically it could possibly be a pain in the bollocks, as opposed to Matlab which is...

@smcarter generally speaking, "it depends", if you can code, I think for the next couple years at least you'll still seem like a bit of a guru in many settings, but increasingly, it will be expected (I believe). R is sufficiently different to python, with a subtle but significantly different...

I check in from time to time but I'm doing more backend programming these days, more traditional IT and not as much finance. Have started doing some consulting/programming with a rising Finnish fintech though, they're making a good name for themselves and we have a couple cool potential finance...

can't hurt

I've actually found their team and their service to be awesome... When I found mistakes in their data, I contacted them and they responded immediately, and resolved issues soon after. Did you contact them, talk with Joey etc?

There will always be the cost of losses as you learn, but I encourage you strongly to investigate backtesting BEFORE you start trading. And also, don't learn trading, study *investing* ;) Read the books by Michael Halls Moore, and his articles. While I am personally quite opposed to "trading"...

@Andy Nguyen - it seems that the attachments are failing (file not found). Is this something that you were aware of?

Ok. So you want a hill climber or gradient descent algo probably, at least to start with. Think about applying jumps to avoid local Maxima, so simulated annealing might be applicable as well. Now... I start with my trusty friend Google, and type "walk forward parameter optimization" and voila...

You don't say what you are trying to do. You don't say why you are trying to do it. You don't say anything of use, or of interest. You should really correct that, if you want to get any advice, of any use, at all. That said, my initial and immediate advice would be "don't rely on brute force"...

Contact Andrew at intrinio.com and tell him that Dale sent you. They have plenty of data and I believe real time.

Interactive Brokers (or in Europe, Lynx, which uses the same data / API but for cheaper) might be a good bet

What range of time will your investment competition cover?

More info required. First question: why? What's your goals?

Why do you pick arbitrary year ranges when calculating and presenting performance? It seems that your backtest in particular, has several selected date ranges, but no obvious reason why they are broken up?

I'm heavily a .NET guy atm for my day job so I can't comment on the Java landscape. That said, looking at Spring, it seems directly comparable to WebApi2 (or my preferred option, ServiceStack), in terms of the MVC framework. So.. I would say that by trying to mix MVC templating and Angular...

How did you go?

I'm just gonna leave this here: http://i2.wp.com/bitcast-a-sm.bitgravity.com/slashfilm/wp/wp-content/images/1520_Ctt_VAR_300ZZdpi-1296x1944.jpg

Look up Value.able by Roger Montgomery, and F-WallStreet

travel. travel. travel. travel more. Read a little, if you must.

Let me pose it to you as a question: In an ever increasingly connected world, in which its possible to trade all markets, all the time, as those anecdotes suggest, what makes you think that operations in any particular major financial hub could/would/(should?) operate significantly differently...

If you think being an algo trader is going to be "more relaxed", i have two anecdotes from personal experience interviewing and chatting with guys in this profession. One company (predominantly pairs trading, statistical correlations, matlab, etc) would hire 16 "candidates" and give them...

theres another guy, ernie chan , i think, who has a book he promotes here and there. I dont know, my interest isnt in algo trading on tick data, i want a long term fundamentals approach, enforced by algo software. Sounds like you already know C++, but if not, C# might be an excellent substitute...

look on this forum for max dama

Look through the Amazon preview, the grammar needs work and suggests a self-produced and not overtly professional product. Ovidiu, you desperately need an editor, and probably at least the outline of some qualifications and experience before you advertise your book here. Good luck though.

These might be fun/educational: https://projecteuler.net

what style of algo trading?

Why on earth would you publish a financial trading model then announce to the people reviewing it that it loses money (not so bad, IF you explain that its more a demo of your technical skills than your trading prowess perhaps) and ESPECIALLY that it's substandard quality and so probably fails to...

that sounds woefully bad. did you end up reading it?

soemwhere on this forum is a threat about free data... in there there's a live data tick feed that you can test your trading on... intraminute level. i think it requires coding in R though. search for it

quandl.com

I can utterly guarantee you that earning more, does not equate to happiness if you do not enjoy the work. You'll still hate your work, you'll just be bribed better to keep doing it. And especially, when that comes with a work-life sacrifice, you very soon start to look forward to long weekends...

You've already got the smarts to learn to invest your own money for you. And you've already done some finance and are already thinking about leaving? What does that tell you. Do what interests you.

Leverage is, and has always been acknowledged to be, deadly, when things turn against you. Home loans, options, CFDs, ... if you go picking up pennies in front of steamrollers, as the saying goes, you eventually get squashed.

http://www.rinstructor.com/ might have potential

Could be just me, but my impression of sales and trading, are of two quite different beasts?

There are italian entrepreneurs now? This came to mind: http://www.economist.com/node/18780853

if you arent particularly interested in finance per say, and you want to solve problems with math/IT/etc, there are plenty of other avenues (silicon valley, medical, logicistics, etc research) that you might want to consider. if you're aiming at quant dev with the idea of making zillions of...

I'm going to tentatively suggest that any "simple strategy" in this type of trading approach is going to be largely ineffective.. what makes you thikn you can do somethign easily and quickly to produce profits (assuming that is your goal ;) )

And depending on who you ask, also putting your time and energy into solving irrelevant hard problems which has nothing to do with the real-world ;)

Despite the fact that Hunger Games seems to me like a poor man's Battle Royale, I found the figures quoted for average salaries remarkable.

Here's hoping change is on the horizon :-P

"A different google?" *sigh*. IT guy, you tried one search phrase and got one result and got discouraged? Here, let me try AGAIN for you: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=FX+%22leaves+quantity%22

Seriously? You're a) working in a trading position, presumably the entry requirements were high, and b) you're specifically working in an IT role, and yet somehow c) you don't know how to, or are too lazy to, use Google? Come ON guys... try even a SLIGHT attempt to find out some of this...

@YolandaF - you don't state what level of position you would be interviewing for, nor your background. These would be useful information to anyone else who might have advice for you.

For everyone interested, to continue: When you're working for the consultancies, (I believe) its much more common to be validating a model then creating an entirely new model from scratch... the banks might have an existing model or methodology for measuring risk exposures, for instance, and...

@euroazn - Australia's regulatory body is apparently even more conservative than Basel, and with more aggressive deadlines... its liquidity modelling, capturing strict capital requirements, and lots and lots of reporting required... All the stuff that makes me a hit with girls at parties! :rolleyes:

I work in this area in Australia, out of the Sydney office. Tools have included matlab, R, vba, excel, some c# / c++ knowledge for placements within banks is handy, some guys use some other statistical packages for modelling in the credit risk division. The job description seems pretty...

there are occasionally interesting projects posted to kaggle.com

There are several head hunters on this forum who would almost certainly be interested in talking to you.

In a related note, has P&D's quant career guide been updated? I no longer see Dominic post here or on wilmott?

It would seem relevant to give context and source of the quote.

With respect Andy, I don't think that I necessarily agree with you on this point. There were several (if not "lots") of guys in finance who would still buy/sell stocks, going through the relevant clearance process with internal compliance regulations etc, but i saw little if any evidence of them...

Depending on your country , you might not have to register as a business. In Australia for example, you may opt to register yourself as a trader with the tax department, meaning that you have something paraphrased as "an identifiable system of trading that you use to generate profits as an...

In my experience, almost no one who works in the finance industry goes home from work and attempts to use their professional knowledge (i.e. what I think you mean when you talk about the skills one might learn in an MFE) to make trading/investing decisions of their own, for their own portfolios...

I once stated in an interview that if the firm wanted me to pull 100 hour weeks, then I wasn't the right guy for their team. They made me smile when they replied, "er, we just tend to think that if you're still here afer 6pm, you either have too much work assigned, or you don't know what you're...

what does "too large" mean?

no, not really... my own current investing strategy is about as simple as imaginable.

In terms of coding, or maths required for the models?

Sorry, my first comment was kind of ironic, I just meant exit opportunities, exit options ;) Speaking from an Australian perspective, someone starting out in a consulting firm in market risk might start on as low as say AUD40K, or as high as 70+ if you landed a job in a good bank, with my idea...

Exit opps? Quit anytime you like. ;) Pay will differ depending on your roles, whether you take a managerial or specialist track etc. no different to any industry, the closer you are to being the guy bringing in the jobs, the more money you earn

what type of trading do you want to do? algo, boiler-room, bond, equity, etc?

seek.com.au is your friend for australia. There are several quanty recruitment agencies that will appear on a simple google search.

Weighing on on the travel thing, travel long, travel far, travel hard. And talk to strangers on the way.

Ah, then I am sorry, I cannot help you there - I've not used ninja et al. Good luck.

If you're stepping through time taking every 5 minute observation, and you wanted to simultaneously check 60 minute observations, whats wrong with simply taking every 12th data point from the first data stream to plug into your second component of your strategy?

What do you mean, is it proprietary? There are a number of tools / companies / products available that would allow you to do backtesting, see https://www.quantopian.com/ for an example (you take peoples base algos and modify them or code your own etc, with real historic price data). Or am I...

May I ask which papers? Depending on their age, they may have already been incorporated so heavily into the wider market's operations that it is difficult to use them today to make a profit. For an example of someone who does readily publish their findings, albeit usually after they are no...

If you want to be a profitable LONE trader, who cares what anyone thinks? If you want to be a fund manager, your record will speak for itself, no? Some qualifications might make you look more above board, but think about how many people in general know what an MFE is... if you're doing it for...

Ah sorry, I more meant, what influenced your decision on whether to buy at the money or out of? Am currently trying to find a good source of option history data, given that I currently i have no access to paid terminals, to run a strategy similarly based on economics (or fundamentals).

Out of interest alain, did you purchase these puts at the money, or some distance out of the money, and what influenced you decision either way, if you don't mind me asking.

Is this of any use? http://mathnetnumerics.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Linear%20Algebra&referringTitle=Documentation

Thanks alain, I am working on this of my own accord so unfortunately my funds are limited and my access to paid data is non-existent. That said, the only experience I had with Datastream was during my Masters degree, trying to load bond prices for some pricing models, and I found it extremely...

I am currently running an optimisation of an investment strategy, that relies on analyst forecasts for equities. For example, using an etrade account, take fundamental data for a previous year regarding earnings, book value etc etc, and use that to predict future earnings / returns on equity...

Barny, I've been with you for a fair bit of this thread, but (more for the attention of anyone just starting to learn to code), advice to avoid an IDE is madness ;) I look back on the days of UltraEdit and so on, and can happily sing good riddance. I <3 the intellisense! hahahahah

Out of interest, the last time i looked at python was years and years ago (it was being taught to a friend of mine in a comp sci class and he asked me to help debug some code or something). The idea of using whitespace as important in the compilation seemed nasty then... i dont know if that is...

gatecrasher, feel free

In the (anecdotal) words of one of my previous employers, when asked how he got to head the large division of our company, "weeeelll... I'll tell you. I don't know a lot about anything... but I know a little about everything..."

1. Watch "Time Bandits" 2. Invent time travel 3. PROFIT$$$$

i'd tweak the above, really at this stage of your entry, and suggest to really consider whether you are likely to want to end up in the developer space... and if the answer is no, skim over your harder (c++) coding subjects, as the vast amount of finance work is excel/vba, and little else UNLESS...

*sigh*

presumably you know what it is? do you know how it's used? what it's used for? what types of functions it might suit? how it might be used in a financial sense?

Its not unheard of, but i've only seen this really happen with very senior positions, partnerships etc. Obviously, anything that makes you harder and/or more expensive to employ while not offering an employer a return on their investment, detract from your marketability (imho).

did you own the shares, or settle for difference?

I have no real issue with the time decay, as its my intention to use them as leverage into short positions.. i dont wish to actively trade the options themselves, but its a valid consideration. Shorting, at least in my local market, appears to be quite expensive. Cheers guys

Hi all Just wondering if anyone here has purchased put options to bet on a declining stock price for their own investing activities? If so: - on what stock exchange - was the outcome positive or negative - what maturities did you use / were you able to choose from? - anything else you wish...

Am I understanding you correctly in that you claim 60%+ returns per annum, over a 50 year period?

before or ater transaction fees, taxes etc?

No aspirations are too grand, if you've got a little knowledge, experience and luck. The second job seems (from your very very brief descriptions) to me, to be the better choice.

pardon my many typos... i just reread that and i was very tired when writingg

I've had similar tasks in my role, but to be honest each product/ valuation has required unique approaches and so there isn't really a " nice" answer to your question i think. Is suggest that ( in Australia at least), a serious consideration will be your qualifying/ industry certification...

Is this for a risk management division? As in, a consultancy? Because if so, one thing will be to consider how you're going to get approval / signnoff on whatever valuation methodology you use. Also, i'll a little unclear.. you're using the word "asset prices for unlisted equity instruments"...

Ed, you in Spain? I'm currently in Madrid and looking for people with an interest in finance, for meetups and just general conversation etc. Puerdo hablar solo un poco espanol, pero estudiando :-P

A mate of mine in Silicon Valley just pointed out Quantopian to me, (it's been mentioned on this forum in other posts), which looks like a good bet if you are trying to build portfolios of short-term positions (i.e. day trading). Disclaimer: I do no particularly endorse this trading style...

A simple good search will answer that for you... come on, even a quick trawl through this or the Wilmott forum should yield results. Can I ask what makes you think you want to do algo trading if you have no idea who is involved in it? Do you have a good idea what this type of employment involves?

2 month timelines? That seems, naively short, no?

bigbadwolf - how do you rate dmitry's actual books I see linked on his website?

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21568741-hedge-funds-have-had-another-lousy-year-cap-disappointing-decade-going Rather damning report card, usual conflict in the reader responses, but generally a good quick read i think.

you might also like to check out F-WallStreet

look at buying Ben Graham's "Intelligent Investor", Roger Montgomery's "Value.able" and use very big margins of safety ;)

lots of models you could use... look at Vasicek, Hull White, splines, etc etc... From the sounds of it, you have the chance to choose which model you use yourself? What are you trying to show / prove in your thesis? Do you have a topic? Sorry for the slow reply, but I'm still travelling and...

Sorry guys, i am currently backpacking around the world for a few months so won't be able to assist with any programming questions. Good luck

And standard abbreviations of the time, according to Wiki ;)

On this note Dominic, how do you compare CV length between USA, Brit etc applicants? I was talking to one of my seniors at my current employer, and he gave me a sample CV which he seemed to quite like, but that I thought was nothing special in terms of layout etc. I've heard anecdotally that...

But I'm told, if you do it right, once is enough ;) Out of interest, where are you going to go?

Do the backpacking. Disclaimer: I just resigned (or rather, took a year off without pay) to go backpacking ;)

from memory, the BS model i coded up was based on the Li and Wong paper, I don't know how that differs from Duan. I haven't gone back through it though sorry, I'm currently quite busy. Good luck.

I've been having some rather intense debates with work colleagues and some ex-equity analysts about this very topic (i.e. the relative overvaluation), recently. Seems I am alone in thinking FB is remarkably overpriced, but we'll see ;)

And today, FB slumps below open day price... looks like the underwriters disappeared!

From an investment forum, an (I think) interesting video on how HFT bounded the Facebook IPO price levels. http://blog.rogermontgomery.com/what-is-hft-and-algo-trading/ Check the youtube video, for an example of HTF stepping in at the IPO $38 level... enjoy. ;)

If you want to know how to value stocks, read these books: http://www.rogermontgomery.com/ and in the same vein but I think not as good, http://www.fwallstreet.com/.

Short answer is, if you don't know what you're asking, I'm hard pressed to know how to help answer you. "If an employer asked you to pitch a stock", then you're working for a broker, who doesnt care what the stock is really worth, so long as you unload it on some sucker and pick up your...

Are you trying to learn how to value stocks, i.e. estimating their intrinsic value in some sense, or pitch stocks, i.e. become a salesman?

if you're trying to do a least squares solver, i think there is a better way to solve for these params. Do a search for one of my earlier posts, about bond pricing models and code i wrote for a thesis. In my code, you'll find examples of fittign to curves solving for unknown parameters using...

You price your coupon-bond as a portfolio-of-zero-bonds? I.e. as though the coupons were all independent of eachother? In practice, such an approach understates bond prices, because there is an inherant dependency on the coupons, if the issuer defaults on an earlier coupon, then all subsequents...

I havent looked at the code for quite a while, but I think the optimisation should work in a similar way, yes. That is, if you change the pricing formulas, the seeking algorithm should find the optimal parameters to fit your curves etc. Good Luck.

Now we're quoting Gandhi? Gandhi was a racist nutter who slept in a bed with two virgins to test his virtue and who praised Hitler as "really not as bad as you're portrayed to be"...

Mate, you're killing me. Let me contrast what you're saying another way. Buffett has averaged 26% returns ANNUALLY for 50 years. He's top 3 richest guys in the world. If you honestly believe that your system exceeds his ANNUAL performance every MONTH, then I would suggest one of two things: a)...

Are you even remotely serious? If I understand you correctly, taking your claim of a 30% monthly return, even with a thousand dollars as your initial investment, why not just let that sit for 12 months and take the ~$20K you'd apparently have earned? You could live on the passive income. Better...

Oops, my bad... delete the thread if you like Andy :)

Mate of mine at work just pointed me to this website, and I haven't seen it discussed here before. http://www.kaggle.com/ datamining, trading algo design, all sorts of problems posted and crowd-sourced (for want of a less wanky term) for solutions, and if you win, you can earn some decent...

Alternatively, use the search functionality (and some initiative) and read some of the many 1,000s of posts that relate to very similar questions.

email Dominic Connor re: his quant guide.

I actually found that very impressive. Good work.

I have seen the same logic applied to the employment of fresh graduates, by a past employer of mine. "We don't hire young people straight from uni, because they all want to work a couple years then quit and go travelling." I see that as less any sort of unfair discrimination, and partly just...

Believe that agents typically get a percentage of the full time rate... of course, that percentage is subject to some variation anyway. They place a senior staff member, and negotiate a high commission, it's beers all 'round.

Anyone used the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 ? I realise it ain't exactly a porsche, but I'm more of a motorcycle guy anyway.... ;)

I'd also suggest using your initiative, and trying to come up with a descriptive name on your own ;)

I'd suggest starting a thread with a remotely descriptive and relevant name in future, instead of this vague and fairly useless one.

Er... if you click Eugene's link, there are plenty of results that appear to be promising, and written in matlab?

I would suggest you read these two: blog.rogermontgomery.com http://www.fwallstreet.com/

I find it puzzling that this topic isn't receiving more attention. Seems to be a fairly pointed thing the OWS crowd could unify behind.

Talk to DominiConnor, the headhunter here. If you've got the skills you say you have, he could be a good start, given you're (presumably) in the UK?

Arguably, it's not their job to go broke doing so, because someone else is distorting the market.

What sort of idiot would jump back into danger when they had no idea what the cause of that danger was? To blame traditional market makers because they DIDN'T all pile in to solve someone else's screw up seems hilariously cheeky.

Wait, now you're telling me Goldman Sachs DON'T own the world? Dang it, I am so confused...

This guy is a champion http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bbc-speechless-trader-tells-truth-collapse-comingand-goldman-rules-world

I'd also suggest SQLite, there are some very good little libraries to access it in C#, and I believe its also well supported in C++. I *think* several of the iphone apps use an sqlite database (your text messages, for example, are stored in an sqlite db), its effectively a single database file...

:rolleyes:

it's unamerican to sell short

So... did you buy?

Look on this website for the careers guides by Dominic Connor, Michael Page finance, and Mark Joshi. Therein lie your answers.

PhDs in quant finance, or PhDs in math etc but supplemented with MFE / CFE-type qualifications, yes.

I've a mate who recently completed a PhD in math, with good knowledge of assymptotics, stochastic, pdes, etc etc. He started looking around at finance work, and was told that while in the past, good maths could get you by, its now the case that with lots more specialised course appearing on the...

i liked it, but depending on what exchange you intend to invest on, some of the strategies may be hard to implement (specifically, a lot of the short selling, and purchases of more exotic convertible instruments). good luck.

did you read it? what did you think? and do you intend to apply any of the ideas in practice?

Quantifiable? How is relative short vs long interest not quantifiable? Similarly, a volatility measurement is a quantitative measurement. And "company vs company" seems to me to be in direct contrast with "overall market variables"??

In the past I've quite liked several of Silvan's articles/interviews. This however, was a long, rambling jumble of fairly childish wordplay... and I really don't know why he bothered. Did you have a particular take that you wanted to discuss Andy, or just opening the forum for discussion?

Volatility getting high suggests people are uncertain. Something like relative short interest (e.g. how many people are betting against a company as opposed to for it), suggests bearish sentiment.

Funny, i recall reading an interview with Oliver Stone after he directed "Wall Street", and he was disgusted because, to paraphrase, "people were coming up and saying to me, they were going to be doctors and engineers, but after seeing my movie and the money to be made, they wanted to work on...

Oh well, at least ilya isn't trying trying to tell you the benefit to society will be that he "provides liquidity" ;) It's not my impression that many people go into finance (at least, "quant finance") to learn how to put together a business, assuming you mean run a business, own and operate...

Indeed. In Australia, warrants cannot be shorted, and the options are typically short-dated. I have to research LEAPS some more, but I get the initial impression that they are quite illiquid and only traded on very few of the ASX stocks. Oh well... maybe I'll try investing in Asia... and battle...

Hmm. The ASX cut their standard option package size from 1,000 to 100 shares earlier this year (for the reasons that you mentioned), and reading their press release around the topic, it suggests that 100 is the standard for most exchanges around the world...

That, and I was desperate to try to steer this quant forum back to somethign remotely related to finance... ;)

Alexei : Interesting that everyone will tell you about their stock picks, but no one mentions their use of quant strategies ;) I am aware that no one is going to throw out their secret sauce for the masses, but I guess I am interested in how people identify what they consider "gropss...

Finished reading Thorp's "Beat the Market" recently, largely dealing in holding hedged portfolios on shorted warrants etc. For various reasons, I can't mimic this investment strategy in my local markets, but I'm wondering out of interest, has anyone on this forum a) read this book and b)...

Just curious Dom, why the preference for the alternative spelling of Muslim? I noticed you use this version exclusively, but I can't find any historic or cultural significance for the difference?

Article (don't think anyone else has posted it yet), on the tools, programming languages etc used in high frequency trading industry. http://adtmag.com/articles/2011/07/29/why-hft-programmers-earn-top-salaries.aspx

Sounds like an interview question, hence maybe the no leveraging angle?

I would agree with groutgauss. Particularly if you don't already have a particular research area in mind, it may be quite difficult to get a supervisor on board if you have only very vague ideas. A simpler approach will be to approach the potential supervisors that you know and respect in this...

ALso, try searching the wilmott forums. They tend to be a technical nature and may be of use. But they won't suffer poorly thought out questions, so make sure you do your homework before you flood them.

It would have taken me no time at all to not bother replying. Did you actually read those links? "In applied mathematics, the curse of dimensionality refers to the fact that some problems become intractable as the number of the variables increases" I don't mean to be short with you, but I...

Try harder. A brief google search will give you any number of articles to read through. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-Monte_Carlo_methods_in_finance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality

Come on guys. A little common sense suggests that almost any professional experience in a decently quantitative field should be in some way useful, if only to expose you to team work, workplace dynamics, etc etc. In terms of technical skills, the more quantitative the better, but in the same way...

I don't think this is solely an American issue. I believe for quite a while over the last few years, I've been reading in our newspapers on the general decline in quality of higher education in Australia, and because of the higher fees they pay, a number of dodgy educational institutions have...

Dale is fine. As for quant career, yeah, I've made the jump from an analyst/programmer career, into quant finance, as of a couple years ago. That interest rate models book by Brigo/Merc is quite well regarded I think, I've used it a few times. But i think you will find it theoretically...

From the way I read your explanation, I think what you're doing makes sense... if you check out my thesis at the start of this thread, I do something similar I believe... fit a term structure to get the implied vasicek params, and then feed them into various bond pricing formulas. I dont see any...

Things are apparently very different in the USA. In my entire career, (having worked in a couple of different fields in two different continents), I have never been asked to provide evidence of my past salary, nor have I heard of such a thing asked of others. While I realise that employment...

Mego: First, I would suggest that posting your question multiple times in different threads is generally frowned upon. Spamming the forum won't earn you much respect. Second, you don't really explain what you are trying to do, or why. You state that "my problem is there is not so much...

Anyone writing up a thesis would be advised to check out LyX, as someone else has already mentioned in this thread. It produces Latex output, but lets you keep from tearing out your hair in frustration which can result from working on the Latex markup directly. I'd do up all my assignments and...

Deleting Twitter sounds like the next step in evolution... Don't lament its passing ;)

I actually started using my real name on forums etc, as a constant reminder to myself that I could always ultimately be identified, so why pretend to hide. I find that using my real name forces me to think long and hard before posting anything, and I think that has saved me from responding to...

If you don't like programming, and you don't like data cleaning, and you don't like dealing with Excel, don't get into quant finance. It's that simple.

Ahahahaha... funnily enough, the only reason I looked at this post was because I wondered how on earth the DEA (drug enforcement agency) would relate to a quant forum ;)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43167213 Some interesting numbers on starting salaries...

I've seen a 3D rendering engine written in Excel in several articles on the net... it's powerful, or at least versatile. It's just also crappy ;)

The quality of posts has really deteriorated as of late....

*sigh* Instead of being condescending, maybe spend the same two minutes formulating a mildly polite response? @BryanSg, search this forum for the career guides, anything by Dominic Connor and possibly Mark Joshi, their pdfs offer a pretty good introductory explanation of the types of work...

Ahahahaha.... if _I_ got invited to a client meeting and it was destined to end up in a strip club packed with hookers, _I_ would feel uncomfortable... my terrible gender affliction aside ;) Could I also offer a slight counter question, in regards to interviewing with a woman while wearing a...

http://news.efinancialcareers.com.au/newsandviews_item/newsItemId-31901

Sigh. I know this is going to blow up in my face, but... I find comments like this rather tedious and unfounded. Honestly, taught to see out the path of least resistance?? In a day and age where the USA has recently had a female presidential candidate, I'm getting kind of tired of being white...

I might be missing something, but I keep getting emails every time someone responds to a thread that I've posted in, even though I've gone to settings and turned off "Preferences > Receive email notications of replies" and "Alert Preferences > Messages in Threads" (all options). I like to see...

Without meaning to be argumentative, I question the use of WCF and how easy it is. I've seen it used rather badly/poorly on several occasions, and can't think of an instance where it has been used well. It added quite a lot to dev time, and product complexity. Have you had a different experience?

I guess, without knowing all the specifics of your individual case and project, my comments definitely require disclaimers, but a lesson I learned myself the hard way is to ask yourself do you NEED to run your fitting every second? Minute? Once a day? In a job, would this code run once a day...

You're talking specifically C++ vs C#? I don't think I've met the programmer yet who could squeeze that much performance out of either to make it matter, like I mention above, so much time is spent trying to "optimise" bits of code... only for foolish mistakes to slip through, its actually...

Ok. I'm going to make a few assumptions. You have a potentially (very??) large dataset. You ONLY want the average, not the actual values themselves, to use in your application at this particular point in time. So, we're doing a very simple operation, to find an average of the records that meet...

In a previous life, I was a pure analyst/coder. Now, I've made the transition out into more quant finance, but obviously that still involves a lot programming. But my terrible secret is that I've been smacked around at various times by the following: Java, ASP Jscript, Javascript, MSSQL, MySQL...

Briefly: - Always avoid moving your application logic into your database layer, if at all possible. Alain is right. - Whereever possible reduce the amount of data you send to your application as early as possible by trimming out unneeded records at the database layer (which is part of why a lot...

At various times, I've done various web post/retrieve calls for different projects. But nothing recently, and without more info than "flunks out", I couldnt make any useful suggestions. Any details on what the specific error messages are?

Alrighty... with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, and provided SOLELY AS AN EXAMPLE of how to use C# and HtmlAgilityPack to try to expedite the retrieval of data from a website, I offer the following. Basically, its some code I hacked together to parse either a sample html file, or a URL, look for a...

Yeah, I can probably upload some demo code to show people a quick and dirty hack on how to scrape some web-based data. I'll look for my project when I get home. I've been meaning to start up a bit of a blog to post entries for stuff like this, but lack of time and a black belt in procrastination...

Does the academic institution you are studying under have any data systems available? I would guess that most finance schools would subscribe to some data (Bloomberg not as likely as it's expensive, possibly Thomson Datastream, Computstat, stuff like that). I've found it very hard (read: more...

Oh, come on man... they made a cut of like, what, 38 Billion? Which, you know, divided into a stated deficit of 9 Trillion, or the projected shortcoming of 50 Trillion over the next few years, is what..... oh, if only I were better at math. But it must be significant, right?

*phew* Crisis averted... everyone, please back to shopping. Everything is fine, once again. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/congress-reaches-deal-to-avert-shutdown/story-e6frg6so-1226036458627

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/u-s-fiscal-crisis-in-spitting-distance-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html Speaking of radical action.. or lack thereof.

Any thoughts on where the metaphorical desk might be, to hide under when the roof is falling in? ;)

I've been sitting back wondering, "Am I the only person here who thinks this epic money-printing circle-jerk can't end well?" I try to explain QE to my friends and family. It's kind of hilarious when they realise: "Oh... OOH... so it's just inventing money out of thin air?"

Disclaimer: I haven't gotten my hands dirty with any OpenCL/CUDA yet. Other than few very basic demos, and reading up a few online tutorials etc. Oh to live a dozen more lives, and have the free time ;) @cgorac: But that said, I think you are correct. It's my impression that the kernals are...

I'm kind of surprised at a couple comments here. Coming from an IT background, C# and .Net seem to me to be very popular / ingrained languages/technologies. There are a few .Net wrappers for CUDA/OpenCL now, and additionally, (and more relevant fo the later posts here), I believe there is a...

Ruby? What the? I thought it died?

I would say your bridge analogy is in effect exactly what Buffett is saying. I.e. "I believe, and am willing to bet with a lot of money, that my ability to value this financial product is better (more accurate?) than the general consensus". So, in Andy's article, he is complaining that he is...