Demand for Quants Surges

[Vadim]

A very interesting article by Ivy Schmerken, I recommend everybody for reading.

Demand for Quants Surges as Trading Requires More Math and Programming Skills by Advanced Trading

Demand for Quants Surges as Trading Requires More Math and Programming Skills

Some quotes:

With the growth in high frequency trading, there is increased demand for quantitative analysts with PH.Ds in math or computer science to program models, develop trading strategies and work with databases. But luring quants to Wall Street still can be a challenge.

In fact, the supply of quants is scarce, experts agree. Overseas students from Asia and Eastern Europe, Alapat notes, represent a disproportionate share of the supply of quantitative talent.
"On the one hand, the quant funds may have lost a bit of varnish," Cotton says. "But the sell-side quant roles seem a lot more important now." In fact, he continues, the credit crisis could boost demand for quants as the deep losses in subprime mortgages and quant trading strategies lead firms to revise their risk models and recalculate correlations among different asset classes.

"People are starting to go offshore to find talent to India, China and Russia," FX Solutions' Plaut says. "A lot of that talent is U.S.-educated; they come here for degrees."

So, when quants get to The Street, on what sorts of projects are they working? Broadly speaking, quantitative analysts are working on "alpha-generation strategies that involve a lot of testing and validation work until they are comfortable that a certain strategy will produce returns over a certain benchmark," says Amba Research's Alapat. The second area is managing, measuring and monitoring risk, he adds. "If you take these two groups, you will cover the work that is done," Alapat asserts.

So is the quant the top job on Wall Street? "It's the top entry job on Wall Street," according to FX Solutions' Plaut. "The top hedge fund advisers surround themselves with people who have these quantitative skills," he says. "If you look at Citadel and Renaissance [Technologies], both of those firms were started by people with significant quantitative skills and they've been extremely successful."

[Andy Nguyen]

Excellent article. I agree it's unlikely that Wall Street will have have less demanding for quantitative positions. Hedge funds seem to be the ones that hire lot of quantitative talents. Even after the credit meltdown, I can't see we going back to basic. If anything, we will see a whole bunch of new complicated products some years down the road, and quants will be right there in the middle of it all

[DominiConnor]

I agree, a lot of the low hanging fruit has been eaten, and we're not in a time of easy profits.

[EricFleming]

we have roles involving mortgage model validation, risk management, etc. -- all related to the sub prime fall out.

More quants are needed now to deal with the situation.