Next Step Advice for a Recent Grad

[POC]

Hello all,



I was tipped off to this forum when I did a quick search of where I might get more information about what it takes to become a quant. It's a career path interests me because of the skill and challenge that (I have been told) is involved. There is no particular type that I am interested in, though research or model validation types appear the most intriguing (these being taken from Mark Joshi's guide).



My background:

-Graduated with 3.6 GPA from a relatively unknown school (so no pedigree). I majored in finance and minored in math so I've taken up a lot of the quantitative courses that would be required (calc III, diff eq, stats).

-I haven't taken any actual programming courses but am learning to program in C++ (I'm using C++ Primer as my basic text with Financial Numerical Recipes in C++ as a supplement.

-Right now I'm trying to line up a job as an entry level trader or financial analyst to get my feet wet. In a few years, perhaps after getting a CFA, go back to grad school for applied mathematics or financial engineering.



I am not afraid to go back to school part time to take a few more courses to be ready. My question is, what have I missed and what is superfluous? I know to somebody that is actually working as a quant, there is probably something amiss so I would appreciate any kind of input. I have tried to keep this relatively brief but am willing to provide any other information.



Thank you to anyone that gives their input!

[redandtheblue]

What do you define as a quant? what do you want to do?

[POC]

A quant (as I understand it) is someone who applied different ideas from math, computer science towards finance to discover and then take advantage of inefficiencies within markets or someone who manages risk/creates general strategies.



In our student investment fund I spent time toying around with a DCF model a previous member had made and tried incorporating different things into it to improve it, like partial Kelly criterion for portfolio weighting and stress testing. That is the reason that I thought research or model validation were interesting. They sound similar to what I did, but at a much more advanced level of course.

[redandtheblue]

I have never read MJ's guide.

I would advise against studying financial engineering. Stats or Comp Sci makes more sense then applied math.



I would learn to program well... It is probably your faster route it. For comp sci courses, I would look at udacity/coursera while you figure out what to do.

[nick-GTP]

Hi POC..



With regard to learning/brushing up your C++, you will find texts on this reading list useful:



·         The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte




·         The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas



·         Design Patterns by Erich Gamma



·         Refactoring by Martin Fowler



·         Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin



·         Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers) by Andy Hunt



·         Elements of Programming by Alexander Stepanov and Paul McJones



·         The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup



·         Effective C++ by Scott Meyers



·         Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley



·         Beautiful Code by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson



·         Coders at Work by Peter Seibel



·         Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman and Julie Sussman



·         Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi