New Quantnet members say hi

Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Hello all, Del Albrecht here. I'm a Baruch MBA Finance student who is getting more and more interested in the quant side. I have a BA/CS from Hunter College (1997) and have been in IT for the past 12 years. I am currently working for Capgemini as a Technical Consultant in the Oracle e-Business Suite (Applications) practice.

I have asked both the MBA advisors and the MS/FE advisors for permission to take MTH 9814 and 9815 as MBA electives this fall, so with any luck I will meet some of the QuantNetters in person. (I am aware of the fact that such activity is discouraged; however, I emailed my qualifications to Cathy Levkulic and I believe we can reach a favorable decision.)

I have been interested in Automated Trading Systems since my undergrad days and have made several stabs at system development on my own (as a hobby). I wrote a tick grapher in MSVC++ years ago, and in the past couple of years I have developed automated forex systems in Java using FXCM's raw socket protocol as well as CMS (VT Trader) APIs. I am also looking into IB's APIs as we speak.

I have also done some manual trading in stocks, options and forex, but my day job keeps me from pursuing this seriously. (Thus, the interest in automated systems.)

(Full Disclosure: none of my systems had an edge!)

So anyway, that's me! Hello everyone!
 
Hello Del,
Your background is more quantitative than other MBA students I met. You probably should have done MFE instead of MBA ;)

Who is the MFE advisors you talked to ? When you said such activity is discouraged, I hope you mean MBA student taking MFE course, not you meeting Quantnetters in person right ? The latter is always encouraged, we are a bunch of friendly, enthusitatic people :)
I agree somewhat with the former since it will be the hardest elective courses you will ever take in MBA program. Usually, people tend to take the easy ones as elective but the MFE courses are specifically designed which require lot of time, programming so it may not be your cup of tea.
If you still want to take it, you may want to ask a couple of members here are who MBA students from Zicklin on how it went for them.

Not to discourage you, Del. Just some heads up. I do hope you enjoy our community here and share with us the algo trading work you are working on.
Regards,
 
Andy, thanks for the welcome and the advice. I do also get the feeling the MFE program is what I was looking for. But I think (given my nonexistent background in finance) that taking the MBA helped me understand the world of finance and how I might best fit in. I am coming to understand that, given my background and age (45), an entry-level MBA job is not in the cards for me. However, an IT/Finance type job might be. That's why I want to explore the MFE program (get my feet wet) without plunging in head first. I'm in my last (part-time) year in the MBA so I have to get some electives in. I don't want or need to take the easy way out.

If the courses are really time-intensive in terms of outside work, I might be better off only taking one of MTH 9814 or 9815 instead of both in the same semester. You mentioned other MBAs have taken the courses? Can you refer me to them for advice?

When you said such activity is discouraged, I hope you mean MBA student taking MFE course, not you meeting Quantnetters in person right ?
Click to expand...

Guess I could have expressed myself more clearly....:smt102
 
Hi Del,
It may be worth it to mention that the MFE students take the 9814/9815 in the Fall after taking refresher courses during summer. I'm not sure if the summer courses are open to outside students or just for admitted MFE students only.
That's the reason couple of MBA students who sat in 9814/9815 last semester disappeared a couple of days after first session. The materials in the courses are assumed known during refresher courses.
None MBA student took 9815. A few took 9814. Of them, you can contact Sam to get his advice
http://www.quantnet.com/forum/showpost.php?p=6701&postcount=2

I'm sure you have no problem in C++, but since it's C++ for Finance, you may want to keep that in mind. We did lot of option pricing, yield curve project in that class.
Best of wishes, Del.
 
Andy said:
That's the reason couple of MBA students who sat in 9814/9815 last semester disappeared a couple of days after first session. The materials in the courses are assumed known during refresher courses.
Click to expand...

There were couple of students that lasted until the midterm but they disappear after the midterm.
 
Bad News

It may be worth it to mention that the MFE students take the 9814/9815 in the Fall after taking refresher courses during summer.
Click to expand...

Ah. I had the impression that the refresher courses were for students that might not have the appropriate background, but based on Andy's comments and a perusal of the MFE website, it appears that EVERYONE takes these courses?

The website does say the refresher courses are ONLY open to admitted MFE students. In any case, I am travelling during the week throughout the summer, so I wouldn't be able to take them even if I could.

Is it possible to get "crib notes" or other material that I could independently review?

If not, I guess I will just have to finish my MBA and enroll in MFE next year ;)
 
dalbrecht said:
it appears that EVERYONE takes these courses?
Click to expand...
Everyone who could did take them. The rest didn't take because they couldn't be here.
dalbrecht said:
Is it possible to get "crib notes" or other material that I could independently review?
Click to expand...
Befriend someone who takes the refresher courses ;)
The materials are online here but only available to MFE students
dalbrecht said:
If not, I guess I will just have to finish my MBA and enroll in MFE next year ;)
Click to expand...
We are here to help you prepare for it \\:D/
 
Hi Andy and everybody on the forum,

This is Vaibhav from India. I look forward to being an active member of the community. Just dropped in to say "Hi".
 
Thank you Andy for such a thread. Ive been looking for a forum like this for almost 9 months now. Ive asked many people but either they were lost of the whole concept of FE or had no links to help me. Ive really trying to get things together to apply for spring 08, since I havn't taken the GMAT yet. I see my self blabing here so ill cut it short. Thanks and I have millions of questions, now I can find somebody to can help guide me in the correct direction. Thank you Andy. pm sent.:thumbsup:
 
Hi and welcome to Quantnet,
I'm glad you found the info helpful. I would suggest that you should take GRE instead of GMAT as the latter limits the programs you can apply to. Where GMAT/GRE is both accepted, GRE is usually the more preferable.
 
Hey Quants !

My name is Ikenna Osakwe, I am currently an undergrad at Baruch, with intentions of switching majors from CIS to QMM and minor Japanese. I am also a full time UNIX Engineer for the Investment Technology Group, INC. We specialize in Algorithmic Trading and Strategies, mainly equities at this time, which drew my attention to this field. I would like to learn about more these pricing models and predicting market trends. Of what I have read thus far, I need to be sound in Mathematical Finance, Programming (Mathlab, R, C++, SAS Programming - to name a few), Statistics and Finance. From the looks of it, most of the members on this site are graduate students so it will be great to learn from you all being a novice/undergrad. I will be attending the Fixed Incoming Trading simulation on Monday, so hopefully I could meet some of you.
 
Hi and Welcome, Ikenna!

I'm just curious why do you want to change your major from CIS to QMM and not to FE if you are interested in Finance?
 
hi Yuriy,

In response to your question, I am assuming that FE == FINANCE and FE != Financial Engineering. I guess the rationale is to position myself in the direction that the Markets are going, ALGO based trading. I also felt that while Finance could be picked up on the side, QMM was much more focused. Also being in IT for the past 8 years in various major wall street firms, I wanted a degree that would complement my skill set without making a huge career shift.
 
Hi Ikenna,
Around here, people use FE as a shorthand for Financial Engineering. Or MFE as Master in Financial Engineering. I'm sure that's what Yuriy meant.
Somebody mentioned about QMM degree before and it was not as focused as MFE. From what you posted, I believe QMM is not what you want to do, but MFE is.

Here is the thread about QMM http://www.quantnet.com/forum/showthread.php?p=8616
Yuriy has that degree so he knew what he is talking about ;)
 
Ikenna,

Andy is right, I meant Financial Engineering. FE stands for Financial Enginering on this forum (and in quant finance community, I think :)). And when I said QMM I meant Quantitative Methods and Modeling (a degree from Baruch's CIS/STAT department).

The reason I'm mentioning it is that I have an MS in QMM and can say a couple of things about it :) If we both are talking about the same QMM, then it would rather be QMM that is less focused than Financial Engineering. QMM is a good set of skills that you can use if you already have a job working in OR, STAT, or related areas. They will teach you optimization, regression, R, SAS and a couple more things, but it is rather a set of skills and is not a focused degree (and technically you can pick up many of the skills like SAS and R/S+ on the job).

However, you cannot pick up stochastic calculus and PDE skills (that are taught in FE) on the job unless you already have a degree in Stats/Applied Math :)

If you want a quantitative degree but not in Finance, take Statistics instead.
 
Andy, Yuriy,

Thanks for your suggestions and guidance, it is really appreciated! The direction that I am looking at going is defiinitely quantative with finance. I initially chose to pursue QMM because of SAS programming, Stocahistic processes and Monte Carlo classes were available within that discipline... However, I missed PDE, many thanks for pointing that out. I will have to look closer at both programs and schedule an appointment with an advisor in the Math department. Yuriy, you are the second person to point that out to me, Professor Harel in the CIS department suggested that a couple weeks ago as well. :)
 
Ikenna,

The QMM program was created from Operations Research. They will teach you Monte Carlo Simulation but it will be applied to industry (like factory simulation, supermarket simulation). As far as I know, the MFE program at Baruch has a significant amount of Monte Carlo Simulations (pricing options, structured finance, etc). Also, the MFE program has Stochastic Calculus, which is sort of Stochastic Processes in continuous time and applied to finance.
 
hi! Everybody,

My name is Raj and I am going to get my PhD in Comp Eng(Minor: Applied Math) soon.

Thanks,

Raj
 

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