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New to the Industry, Help Appreciated!

benzbubblecat

Joined
3/5/11
Messages
34
Points
18
I need a little help in terms of direction. I have an undergrad in computer science and I am wondering what I should do for a masters to get into the financial services industry.

I love the quant world, but I am not really interested in the pure maths. I am more interested in risk modeling, data mining and algorithmic trading. Would a masters in a quantitative discipline be a good path to a quant developer job? What about something in risk management or prop trading? Would a CFA be helpful for any of this? Thanks!
 
You can always try to do it without masters if you feel you have the knowledge you can just apply to different positions. Otherwise you can go for masters in financial engineering and choose a program that is more applied to your interests and skills. Personnaly, I believe a CFA is always helpful (sometimes more sometimes less), but it is a designation known all over the world of finance. Good Luck.
 
Would a masters in a quantitative discipline be a good path to a quant developer job?
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I believe that for this particular issue it is depended on a program giving qualities a developer needs. Some masters may be helpful and some not.

Would a CFA be helpful for any of this?
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As for CFA, in most cases it is helpful. I know many occasions where CFA is decisive in a career path.
 
Algorithmic trading may offer you the sort of work you'd be good at.

The bad news is that you'd have to learn to program.
 
So the consensus is that one shouldn't necessarily jump into a masters for these kinds of careers? I don't think that MFE programs are much of an option because I would need to take many undergrad level math and economics courses to be a competitive applicant. In view of this and my interests, can you suggest some other areas I may want to consider?
 
benzbubblecat said:
I need a little help in terms of direction. I have an undergrad in computer science and I am wondering what I should do for a masters to get into the financial services industry.

I love the quant world, but I am not really interested in the pure maths. I am more interested in risk modeling, data mining and algorithmic trading. Would a masters in a quantitative discipline be a good path to a quant developer job? What about something in risk management or prop trading? Would a CFA be helpful for any of this? Thanks!
Click to expand...


CFA takes lots of time and is not so valuable for QF career path.
Better to go through some training in Corporate finance and Derivatives Risk management.
 
But if you already have knowledge of CFA materials then it's not very time consuming.
 
I'm not in the financial industry but experience has been in the public sector. Some of the work, like risk management modeling is common ground in public/private sectors. That being said, my advice would be MSc in Statistics (or MFE) would complement your programming in CS. Learning Bayeseian statistics, MC simulation, conditional probability and distributions would be the pillars on which you can build on. Mind you Risk Management is an art form - its not a one size fits all type of deal. You need intuition and creativity on your choice of variables and scenarios to model. Good Luck
 
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