excerpt from
CMU MSCF Quant Net Chat - 9/28/11:
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Comment From Siyang
A relevant to nowadays financial landscape would be, how the regulatory rules/changes might affect the job prospect of MSCF students?
COMMENT FROM RICK BRYANT - This is a difficult question to answer, in part because we do not yet know what the new rules will be and, in part, because of unanticipated consequences that inevitably result from regulatory initiatives. But here is my take: there are four “sweet spots” in quantitative finance for which are students are eminently qualified and, in my opinion, are not going away irrespective of the regulatory environment: (1) “finding alpha” or in the vernacular, “beating the market;” (2) market making; (3) structured products and (3) risk management. While some of these jobs may move from one provider to another (e.g., traders at prop desks at the sell-side banks moving to hedge finds per the “Volker Rule), or out or one jurisdiction to seek less draconian capital or solvency rations (“regulatory arbitrage”), the basics of the business will continue to require the pricing of derivatives, market modeling and statistical analysis of machine learning. The skillset needed to perform these functions have been in high demand and, I believe, will remain in high demand.
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Rick Bryant is the director of the
CMU MSCF program, and based on his comments structured product will still be in high demand. However I'm also curious to hear the opinions from the people on the street, anyone?
