To enter, or not to enter

[Taco Johnson]

I'm considering entering the world of Wall Street. I know I would be an excellent Quant.

However, I have no serious mathematical experience or programming skills; I stopped at calculus b/c I wanted to be a bio-chemist.

Recently, I woke up to the situation the world is in. & decided to take a shot at trading. While I was successful, I have grown afraid of the lack of QE and I feel like my hand is in a blender- waiting for someone to turn it on.

It will take me several years to learn everything necessary to become a quant. Is this venture worth my time? Or do you see the Street disappearing before I would even be able to apply.
Lastly, by now I'm sure there is an overwhelming amount of competition for such jobs. Is the job field currently crowded and likely to grow even more overrun?

Thank you for time. - Taco.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Uhhh, the competition is plenty fierce for those who already know math and programming.

 

[Taco Johnson]

I could learn- redirect my studies. However, considering that:

It will take me several years to learn everything necessary to become a quant. Is this venture worth my time? Or do you see the Street disappearing before I would even be able to apply.
Lastly, by now I'm sure there is an overwhelming amount of competition for such jobs. Is the job field currently crowded and likely to grow even more overrun?

 

[Taco Johnson]

Uhhh, the competition is plenty fierce for those who already know math and programming.

I will take that for what it is. GL. We won't be here for long.

 

[SYau]

If you have the drive and passion, you can do it. But since you don't have a rigorous math/programming background, you will be quite behind compared to the competition. You should do some of the suggested reading here before you decide, and if you are serious, then take some more advanced math classes from local colleges (as well as C++/OOP classes). You might end up hating all the math/programming.

Also, you don't need to be a quant to be a trade.

 

[Yike Lu]

Classic derivatives quants are a dying breed. You need to be very clear about what kind(s) of quant you wish to be to receive anything remotely informative.

Programming and data analysis are extremely important transferable skills and are part of the quant arsenal. I would suggest you study these things (and their pre-requisites) first. When I say programming, I don't mean "C++", I mean getting repetitive/mundane tasks automated (bash scripting, Python) and using programming to do work (stats, math, etc).

Yes lack of math skills is a hindrance. I'd personally regard MV calc, lin alg, prob/stat, diff-eq, basic complex analysis to be essential foundational material, although not all used every day. There's also plenty of stuff on the CS side that I'm personally missing, but e.g. formal course-work in algorithms and data structures are useful (though not necessarily essential) as well.

 

[DominiConnor]

Had lunch last week with a "classical" quant, one eminent enough to have a model named after him and he is broadly of the opinion that the time for new pricing models has passed for most instruments.
My view is congruent with that position, being unsure whether we are at a turning point in the curve or are tending to a limit, since I agree that the general framework simply has been largely mined out. Thus I suspect we are waiting for a jump with no plausible way of predicting it's arrival.

The question you need to ask yourself is "what things can I do that people will give me money for ?" Then optimise with respect to a utility function that's some mix of money, lifestyle and types of work *and* risk. Fretting over job titles is unlikely to lead to a satisfying result.

Part of the jump process is that there will come a time when the number of people with "quant" in their job title will go down, currently it is going up because it is being attached to more different types of job and that reflects the fact that maths are diffisung into all types of banking work.

Thus it is a bit like computer skills, I went into banking when most of what most people did wasn't on a computer, now it is and although thre number of IT people has reached about 1/6 of bank workers, pretty much everyone in banking could be fairly re-branded as an Excel/Outlook operator. But that doesn't mean IT skills are enough, you need to find a mix that suits your abilities and aspirations.

So I have to say to Taco, that I would counsel him to apply his talents elsewhere. finance uses many types of skill and you should look at areas where you can more easily beat others, because ultimately that's the criterion for getting hired.