quants in Israel

JonAaron · Post by **JonAaron** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 11:11 am

Does any one know good quants that are based in Israel or want to move to Israel? I'm looking for people that would be interested in starting a new venture here.

FDAXHunter · Post by **FDAXHunter** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 11:24 am

Not at the moment, but I know you won't have much of a problem. There's quite a few quantitatively oriented people in Israel that usually have to move to London due to the lack of opportunities on the ground in Israel.

Martingale · Post by **Martingale** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 1:57 pm

i think david used to be based in Israel, but he has disappeared for years, maybe he moved to one of the Islands on Carribeans

tbretagn · Post by **tbretagn** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 5:25 pm

We have a few (locals and expats). Seems quite cool to work there.

Not sure the wages are the same as London's but people moving there usually have other priorities.

Dunno anybody currently wishing to move there though. Will have a look.

T

JonAaron · Post by **JonAaron** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 10:25 pm

10x. That would be great.

Pok · Post by **Pok** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 3:21 pm

I was looking for opportunities in Israel some time ago.

That being said, I am located in a really non-financial place and have familiar bonds that made me consider the idea.

I know there are a few HF, but don't know how quant hardcore they are.

On the educational side, I was surprised for the lack of choices, since doing applied-industry oriented math programs is a priority.

I think they're doing mainly Physics, Image Processing, Electronics and IT.

But since there is no job market to feed with good quants the offer have not yet arrived.

I know some Uni was about to jump into the wagon of Fin. Math. programs, but their web page is quite obsolete yet, so I guess they're not hitting it.

Other Fin. Eng programs are more MBA alike. In fact I spoke with Prof. Wiener, from Jerusalem University and he recognized me there was a lack of research in the area.

Anyway, JonAaron drop me an mail if want to disclose your plans. I'm interested.

saffron · Post by **saffron** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:06 am

You can't find much of that there Pok. The problem isn't the lack of talented, quantitative people, it's that the quant approach hardly exist. I think there are two main reasons for that, the first is that most money managers / banks are run solely by 'old school' people doing macro stuff and perhaps a bit rigid and set in their old ways and, more importantly, as far as I understand, most (significantly) of the revenues Israeli banks make are from retail clients, charging high commissions from ma and pa. So, this doesn't realy require sophisticated products...

The little that does exist that I know of: Brevan Howard has an office there, ITG (which is agency trading), Super-derivatives (providing a platorm for FX options pricing) and I think there might be a couple more really small quant funds at their first stages. I think that's pretty much covers it...

Finally, and just my humble opinion, I think for an Israeli quant working in the US or UK and someone who is still hungry and wants to keep this kind of career (and doesn't have different priorities as tbretagn wisely mentions) it would be a careerwise suicide mission, so to speak, to return to Israel for a quant job. If that one place goes belly up or things don't work out he's going to be stuck without a career in quant. finance, and of-course the pay is lower... so in terms of risk/return I think it's pretty far off from the horizon.

On the other hand, there are quite a few young people in Israel who do want to work in this business and do have the brain & skills, so I think having a little patience and looking a bit farther ahead (which I know is an issue for Israelis) you can train them to be quite productive.

Good luck.