wow…douche of the year nominee
I think bleach was pretty accurate. More Asians suffering from physics envy.
It would be nice to learn more about the math stuff mentioned, but testing this is not necessary, especially when so much of it is proprietary and subject to becoming outdated. You should really be learning this fancy math stuff at the high paying job, which you already have landed, the same job that is supplementing your education by paying for you to be in the CFA program. Wait , you mean to tell me that you don’t have that job? You work in ITin Bangalore? you’re hoping that the CFA program will help you make that switch? Face palm.
The cfa material, as it is, is fairly timeless. It’s like a liberal arts degree in finance for better or worse. It’s not a bachelor of science in making money, which is what you guys (quant heads/Asians) seem to be after.
“The cfa material, as it is, is fairly timeless. It’s like a liberal arts degree in finance for better or worse. It’s not a bachelor of science in making money, which is what you guys (quant heads/Asians) seem to be after.”
This is BS and I don’t mean Bachelor of Science.
(Insert 7 blind men and the elephant analogy here but) the CFA charter is a professional qualification, more akin to applied science than liberal arts.
They do go out of their way to avoid any mention of calculus, esp in economics or behavioral finance, for example, when explaining diminishing marginal utility or marginal cost = marginal benefit, etc. A simple “d^2u/dw^2 < 0” or “dc/dq = db/dq” would make things clearer.
The rally cry of the innumerate.
How so? The models were faulty to begin with. They used 20 years of housing data to predict an upward trend that would never end. Models are useful for forecasting, but rarely are they ever spot on. Give me a break.
if you’re looking for math and finance — you probably should check out financial engineering
http://www.ieor.columbia.edu/pages/graduate/ms_financial_eng/index.html
“Financial Engineering is a multidisciplinary field involving financial theory, the methods of engineering, the tools of mathematics and the practice of programming. The Financial Engineering Program at Columbia University provides a one-year full-time training in the application of engineering methodologies and quantitative methods to finance. It is designed for students who wish to obtain positions in the securities, banking, and financial management and consulting industries, or as quantitative analysts in corporate treasury and finance departments of general manufacturing and service firms.”
Mathematics. An elegant wepon… for a more, civilized, age.
Now the good modelers are all but extinct; seduced they were by the dark side of equations.
Right, but extending that to say “doing more math does NOT make you smarter” is how innumerate people can feel good about themselves. It would be like citing sport injury stats to justify being a couch potato.
What I found more useful than matrix algebra and calculus was compound interest math. It seemed to be quite pervasive in the CFA exam syllabus, e.g. equity valuation models, futures pricing, fixed income (naturally).
Any one here looking into the CQF (Certificate in Financial Engineering)?
CFA exams weren’t designed to measure quantitative ability, it’s about learning the fundamentals of finance and investments in order to provide value to your clients in some fashion. Please explain to me how performing complex math will help me beat the S&P on a consistent basis. If you want to develop highly complex prediction models, there’s a lot more room to introduce spurious correlation. Simply knowing more math won’t help if the inputs you are using are faulty to begin with. Garbage in, garbage out.
No program will help you beat the S&P, whether it’s math intensive or not.
Agreed, but it does introduce you to the concept by introducing asset allocation concepts, MPT, different types of strategies, incorporating derivatives, etc. As a PM, your primary concern is beating your benchmark, whether that be the S&P, 10 year T note, or some other metric.
I don’t think that matrix algebra and calculus is going to add a lot of value to the charter, although I suppose it will make it harder for those who haven’t done it in college or for a while.
I do think it would be nice to make the optimization section of L3 a little less black-boxy. Yet, the truth is, most optimizers are used in a black-box way. Heck, most regression is applied in a black-box way as well. There’s matrix algebra and calculus going on to spit out regression results, but most people don’t need to know that in order to use regression.
I keep falling back on the analogy that “to drive a car, it’s not necessary to know how to build a car.”
The important corrolary is: “Knowing how to build a car doesn’t automatically make you a good driver.”
Yes, I too feel a bit handicapped without sufficient math. But the fact is I am far better off than my peers in Math/stats (they don’t seem to know anything including correlation). Why do I feel inadequate even after all levels. Is it because those guys don’t know what they don’t know? And I know what I don’t know and want shrink the size of that set?