The fact of the matter is, financial engineers (and quantitative folks in general) are taking the CFA but business folks are not learning the concepts of financial engineering which decreases their competitiveness. Individuals who can do both will persevere in the future; ignore this advice at your own risk… BTW -> many of my colleagues are quants from funds (stats arb, vol trading) and banks (structuring / pricing); though I agree there is a fair amount of ignorance to this subset on the forum…
"Ignore this advice at your own risk… " I’m going to ignore this advice…doesn’t sound very fun to me.
The crossover that you refer to below could be because the CFA curriculum is far more interesting on a relative basis than sitting in front of a computer deriving and solving the greek alphabet. As fascinating as quantitative finance can be, I just don’t think most people find the latter very stimulating. Keys Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The fact of the matter is, financial engineers > (and quantitative folks in general) are taking the > CFA but business folks are not learning the > concepts of financial engineering which decreases > their competitiveness. > > Individuals who can do both will persevere in the > future; ignore this advice at your own risk… > > BTW -> many of my colleagues are quants from funds > (stats arb, vol trading) and banks (structuring / > pricing); though I agree there is a fair amount of > ignorance to this subset on the forum…
^ You are making a HUGE assumption that people can handle the math, even if they worked really hard and really wanted to. That’s just not true. We are talking about people who can get, for example, 800/800 math SAT/GRE/etc. in their sleep and feel insulted that they were forced to take such easy math exams. In the CFA program, you have people freaking out over CFA quant like multiple regression.
I’ve tutored people in math before and some just couldn’t understand math. Math for quantitative finance work is not possible for people who are anything but highly gifted in math. There is no “trying” to get the math, you either have it, or you don’t - or somewhere in between that might require you so much time that you’re useless for your job. It’s not an issue of interest for most people, but rather mathematical ability.
^ bllsh$! you’re probably lacking the clear communication skills. It’s attitudes like this that put-off business majors from sucking up pride, going back to the books and building the skills necessary for the future. Get off your throne… I do not come from a maths background and have been able to solve PDEs and SDEs, numerical simulations, etc…just takes time, committment, and resoursefulness -> not to mention good guidance. Use the maths primer from the CQF as guidance on excellent math tutelage for preparation of financial engineering.
I believe most non-quanty folks fear math due to the subpar teaching methods they recieved in their early years --> once you understand the language of mathematics, most of it is really not that difficult, at least on the elementary level (Calc 1-3, ODE, PDE, prob, lin. algebra, etc…) ; one of the difficulties is there are so many different symbols authors use for the same concepts that obscures the learning process…
I’m reasonably good at math, but I was never good with the little “tricks” one seems to invoke to solve problems. “Hey, look, if we just substitute 2pi/Sin^2(Theta)dTheta for dx in the integral, the answer just pops out! Wow! Whoda thunk it ends up being 1.” When I studied differential equations, it somehow was hard for me to grasp that what we’re solving for is a set of equations - something that occurred to me only much later. I kept thinking we were looking for something more concrete than that. I was actually able to do reasonably well, but kept thinking “isn’t there a next step?” Probably that was my physics background talking, since in physics you are usually solving the equation in order to do something with it that requires next steps. In my experience, there are people who are math “naturals,” people who have pretty much no mathematical ability (but may or may not be intelligent on other topics), and then there is this middle ground that can learn if it is presented well. BTW, Wilmott seems to present some stuff well, but then does silly things like not label his axes so you’re sitting there wondering “what is this graph supposed to show, again?” But when he is clear about something, he is very very clear, and that’s good. So I find that when you’re listening to Wilmott, half the time you’re thinking “Aw, this is great, now I understand,” and half the time you’re thinking, “WTF is he talking about, again?”
I agree with bchadwick. I disagree with Keys.
Keys Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ^ bllsh$! you’re probably lacking the clear > communication skills. It’s attitudes like this > that put-off business majors from sucking up > pride, going back to the books and building the > skills necessary for the future. Get off your > throne… > > I do not come from a maths background and have > been able to solve PDEs and SDEs, numerical > simulations, etc…just takes time, committment, > and resoursefulness -> not to mention good > guidance. > Uh, there’s a research done on this before about how neurons pathway developed on our childhood (and guess what? It got nothing to do with education - more like how exposed we are in our childhood to the said field). This leads to what we call “talents” which leads to why some people are great at maths, why some are great with music, and so on. Can I do the math needed to excel in financial engineering/quant? Hell yeah! Will I be as good as someone whose bread and butter and talent is math? Hell no! You saying that everyone can do high level math is like saying everyone can compose a song as good as Beethoven, which is non-sense.
^you are using extreme examples here…I am refering to the need to become more quantitative; not to become a savant… The need for higher quantitative abilities is creeping through all spectrums of finance; whether that is quant, equity research, or sales/trading…you do not have to be a whiz in the non-pure-quant areas, but a least able to communicate and understand generally the tools and instruments…
^ if you phrase the statement that way, then yes, to some degree finance practitioner needs to understand quant. but of course the level of understanding is still debatable. On another note, what do you think about the books by Carol Alexander (stumbled to one of her books when I was looking for a modeling book).
^ I have not studied Alexanders teachings but I have heard the series is some of the best.
i still believe keys = wilmott, ignore this advice at your own risk…
This thread should be : Is Keys taking over the forum ? 
^ while my thread count is exponential in the past week, it will take awhile to catch upto you!
actuaryalfred Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i still believe keys = wilmott, ignore this advice > at your own risk… i’m pretty sure keys is wilmott as well, good catch. he’s been on a roll with a cqf marketing campaign recently, and now he went undercover, that sneaky bastard. good to have him around anyway
+1 Keys = Paul Wilmott
Mr. Wilmott, could you share a coupon code for CQF please? 
Keys Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ^ I have not studied Alexanders teachings but I > have heard the series is some of the best. I have the 2nd volume on financial econometrics, and the coverage of PCA, correlation, and cointegration is excellent. I haven’t read the section on copulas yet, and not sure I really care to.