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Baruch program - equity deriv VS credit deriv FOCUS?

fixedincomenyc

Fixed Income Analyst
Joined
7/23/07
Messages
20
Points
11
Hi all,

I'm doing some long term planning. Basically I'm more or less a credit deriv guy, less interested in equities. I wanted to know how/what the cirriculum focus is geared toward at Baruch's MFE.

Thanks
 
We have a pretty good training on equity derivatives in the form of evaluation, modeling. I believe most graduates from any worthy MFE program will know how to valuate options, swaps, bonds using numerical methods. It's more so at Baruch MFE program where everything is done in C++

In addition, we have excellent faculty whose expertises are in credit derivatives, structured finance. As a result, most of our graduates end up in credit derivatives, structured finance, be it trading, research or modeling of products whose underlying are CDS, CDO, CLN, etc

Credit derivative is hotter, newer and more exciting to work with ;)
There are optional courses you can take if you want to go into other specific markets.
 
I would say: equities is a must and credit is optional.
 
Just to add; valuation of a lot of derivatives is preety similar (finding expected values) --- a FX option works identically to a equity option and so do many interest rate and commodity derivatives..... Its nice to have a background in option theory, you can apply it to most areas across the spectrum...

and as Andy pointed out, we do indeed have a great faculty in Structured finance, which helps to get a really good feel as to how structured products (including CDO's work)...
 
reply

Andy, et al

Thanks for the reply quantnet.

Good point. I'm glad to know there's some flexibility within the cirriculum. I'm sure columbia/princeton has something to the likes of this as well. Just want to keep the options open - no pun intended!

Thanks
 
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