How valuable would CAIA (Chartered Alternative Investment Analys) be for a software engineer

[kilyas]

My question is aimed at the investment professional specially working in hedge funds, who might be in a better position to shed some light on this issue. For somebody at a senior level IT position and over 8 years of experience in this field and working for the financial services, how beneficial would the CAIA qualification be:-

1) Assuming that the main objective is to enhance and upgrade ones career to better perform within IT field with emphasis on moving to the next level within IT in hedge funds or other financial markets?

2) How easily could a mid to senior level IT person; with CAIA and experience in financial markets but on software development side; move into a more business role, and how would his IT background augment or help him and his company in this new role.

3) How would such a combination be helpful(IT and CAIA) for a potential employer, and are their any roles/job descriptions which would require this qualification?


Secondly would it be a viable path to move to financial engineering side of the equation? And how helpful would CFA/CAIA qualifications be to move in this direction?

 

[PatM]

1) I doubt if the CAIA would be beneficial for working at a hedge fund. Look at the CAIA website; it concerns people who will be investing in hedge funds or private equity (fund of funds or wealth managers). There is not much about how to manage a hedge fund, or anything about IT.

3) The best positions for a CAIA are at funds of funds, where the people are one level removed from the buying and selling of actual securities. They pick managers, not securities. Generally it's more of a private banking / wealth management position, although some funds of funds use leverage, combined with derivatives (futures / options) as overlays to offset some of the portfolio risk, and some others like GOTTEX directly participate in financing arrangements like leases with part of their money to realize more consistent income, instead of putting it all in hedge funds, and then call those 'alternative assets'. If you want to work at a fund of funds, study up for the CAIA.

For financial engineering, it's not useful. The most math used is regression; maybe a bit of style analysis.
Same with the CFA, although the CFA is a bit more of a general investments exam. It pretty much covers everything in investing, but not in a quant way. A bit of portfolio theory, bond math, and regression should get you through. If you want to know that stuff, and everyone in investments should, then investigate the CFA.