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How relevant is my current experience?

Juggernaut

Joined
4/19/15
Messages
12
Points
13
I've been working as a Financial Analyst at a boutique M&A firm in my country for 8 months. My current job involves few mathematical concepts and very little coding. I want to work as a Quantitative Researcher in the future and I'm planning to apply to various quantitative finance programs in the US. My question is, do I have to start afresh when it comes to working in the quantitative space or will my current experience help me secure a better position after graduation in the same?
The reason being I could very well start looking for a job which is focused on quantitative finance rather than working in corporate finance.
 
yetanotherquant said:
For what?
Click to expand...
Let me put it this way, currently I'm an analyst in the field of corporate finance, will this experience help in securing an associate role in quantitative finance after graduation, say from a top tier quant program or do I need to work as an analyst in quantitative finance so that I can look forward to associate roles in the future?
 
Juggernaut said:
Let me put it this way, currently I'm an analyst in the field of corporate finance, will this experience help in securing an associate role in quantitative finance after graduation, say from a top tier quant program or do I need to work as an analyst in quantitative finance so that I can look forward to associate roles in the future?
Click to expand...
But what is your goal?
Money? I don't know your context but I would say that in Germany (where I live) an ambitious person from corporate finance has more chances to make a career upto to CFO than a quant.
Why? Simply because many small- and midsize companies hardly need quants.
Fun? Not really, almost noone wants "innovative" complex products anymore, market liquidity dries.
 
yetanotherquant said:
But what is your goal?
Money? I don't know your context but I would say that in Germany (where I live) an ambitious person from corporate finance has more chances to make a career upto to CFO than a quant.
Why? Simply because many small- and midsize companies hardly need quants.
Fun? Not really, almost noone wants "innovative" complex products anymore, market liquidity dries.
Click to expand...
Very well, but I don't want to grow in a field where I know I won't be having exposure to mathematics and coding. That being said, I chose to work in an M&A firm to get the required experience in finance. My goal is not money, are you saying that quantitative finance jobs are limited to pricing options and developing trading strategies?
 
Juggernaut said:
are you saying that quantitative finance jobs are limited to pricing options and developing trading strategies?
Click to expand...
No they are not (and these two are the most wanted).
But you can also press buttons and crunch Excel sheets to generate risk reports (the advantage working in risk is that your job is relatively safe) or debug a legacy code.

Once again, being quant is not more as sexy as before! Of course there are interesting jobs and good money but the way to them is really hard. As a junior, be prepared to make backtesting, model validation, reporting, legacy code debugging for several years. Only after them you may (or may not) be promoted to senior and will be able to make your own models and, in general, have some interesting tasks. I went this way. But I had enough juniors that were passionate with math for a month or two but then gave up quickly.
 
yetanotherquant said:
No they are not (and these two are the most wanted).
But you can also press buttons and crunch Excel sheets to generate risk reports (the advantage working in risk is that your job is relatively safe) or debug a legacy code.

Once again, being quant is not more as sexy as before! Of course there are interesting jobs and good money but the way to them is really hard. As a junior, be prepared to make backtesting, model validation, reporting, legacy code debugging for several years. Only after them you may (or may not) be promoted to senior and will be able to make your own models and, in general, have some interesting tasks. I went this way. But I had enough juniors that were passionate with math for a month or two but then gave up quickly.
Click to expand...
I understand the bigger picture now. Thank you for the valuable insight. :)
 
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