Screwing oneself out of the box

Rookie_Quant · Post by **Rookie_Quant** » Sun May 22, 2005 2:20 am

ty scotty...

that makes sense...

JabairuStork · Post by **JabairuStork** » Tue May 24, 2005 12:35 am

Maybe you should give us some more specifics . . .

Even if you are a "generalist", you still did some specific things, right? Assuming you actually did SOMEthing, choose the specific things you did that you liked and that you understood (hopefully there are some that fulfill both criteria), and make yourself a specialist in that area. You're already half way there.

ComteZero · Post by **ComteZero** » Tue May 24, 2005 9:26 am

i'm quite in that same position as you are Rookie quant : trading from single stock vanillas to IRD structured products, and looking to jump in a job where i would be a specialist.

i guess at the end it's valuable to have this cross asset knowledge even if you're not specialized in a single domain. to find jobs it's more difficult, but if you try to understand deeply what you do, at the end you finish to have nearly the same knowledge as a specialist would have.

the issue is that is takes more time...

YukaRedux · Post by **YukaRedux** » Tue May 24, 2005 10:13 am

I'd agree with jabairustork - it's more feasible to remodel yourself within your existing role & leverage it later into a more specialist position, than to try to start from scratch elsewhere.

The thing that concerns me, RQ, is that you seem to be assuming a specialist role will be more of a challenge & have less mundane elements than a generalist position. Good luck with that one.

Martingale · Post by **Martingale** » Tue May 24, 2005 10:22 am

Yeah, RQ, so you're tired of playing golf with Michel Wei, beating MonkeyA in online poker and all the good life you have?

Rookie_Quant · Post by **Rookie_Quant** » Tue May 24, 2005 7:00 pm

Martingale,

If only i could play golf and poker for a living...oh wait, i could...but there is that pesky barier to entry of initial capital...that's what I'm working on now.

Jabairu, Yuka, et. al,

Open book: young guy, 1st in my class at top US undergrad business school. Was interning at a relatively well-known FoF and got an offer to stay, and since I love where I live, and so does my wife, I stayed. Good quality of life, suckass job, nothing rare here.

Problem: FoF business model is becomming obselete in many cases, especially an antiquated one. So, what to do? Prepare to make a jump if necessary. So I think, what should/could I jumpt to?

What I like: I have a particular affinity for trading, no training whatsoever, but i've been told I think like a trader. Area of interest- options/vol trading (maybe equity). Used to trade a hybrid equity/option account for a friend/boss while I was still in school. Reasonable learning experience, up 60% or so in 2003, yadda yadda...not bad for a first go I thought.

What I'm 'trained' to do: All my job really involves is trying to locate hedge fund strategies that fall within our "mandate" and construct a portfolio. I dont make any of the decisions, and most of the trading strategies that draw my attention are too complicated for the environment I find myself in...if it isn't credit, risk arb, converts, or l/s equity US, its just tooooo scarrrryyyy. So, I try to add value by modeling FoF portfolios, creating factor sesitivity models that at least pass a reasonability test, and am working on a sort of risk metrics equivalent for FoFs...trouble there is, even my own shop doesnt give two shits about portfolio optimisation. Who do we like? How long have we known them? What's the standard deviation of monthly returns? These are inputs.

If I had my pipe dream scenario, id want to study equity options/vol trading and maybe one day trade or run a small fund. The good thing is that I am in a particularly good position to observe the good, bad, and ugly of asset management, but I need some way to get hands on learning in a real trading environment.