Interview with a quant trader

um i know there's a lot of stories about quan firms pumping out eight-figure bonuses and stuff like that and it definitely does exist but i'd say at the five-year mark you're probably an experienced trader but not a senior one so definitely mid-six figures we're talking five hundred thousand dollars three to seven hundred thousand dollars is a very safe bet today in agreeing to this um this is going to be a lot of fun and also much requested because the job of a quant trader is something that is considered lucrative and mysterious so thank you for agreeing to this you know i feel like we're going to learn so much um so without further ado let's just jump into it so why don't we start off

with just a brief intro about yourself and maybe just a little bit about your background hi i'm morgan um i guess the easiest way to start off would be to start with undergrad that's where most people probably are planning their journey so i went to boston college which is a very heavy finance school and i was doing i was financing econ major and at the time everybody pushes towards two types of jobs investment banking and consulting which is classic from a finance school so i went the investment banking route and i got into investment banking for my junior internship and found out oh this is not what i want to do this is really but granted i did have a very good time studying general finance i started trading my own portfolio in college it was something that i was really into so i didn't want to leave the finance industry as a whole i just thought you know i should pivot and go into trading but there's two types of traders really if we talk super generally there's the traders who trade the classic style you know the fundamental style or some type of technical analysis and then there's the ones who are using some type of quantitative method and quantitative trading is a massive field anything from somebody coding their own little python script which tells them when certain tickers are up or down all the way to people who are doing completely automated you know neural network style stuff that's all quantitative trading but i just knew that i wanted to be on that side so i ended up going to upenn to do a computer science degree in the mcit program and i was in the same year as tina to get the technical background not only to be able to code at a competent level but also to have that on my resume because quantitative firms want people in general again a generalization that have this ability to do either some type of logical analysis or technical analysis or you know a coding style analysis because you spent so much time dealing with data of some type and you at least won't know how to deal with it versus somebody who hasn't had that background awesome that was good you covered through everything

up until now since undergrad um so i answered one question uh so you were doing investment banking you're like you know this is not great so what made you think that you wanted to go trading specifically so i had been trading my own portfolio as initially with stocks but you know when you have a small amount of capital two stocks are boring so i went into options um and it's boring and yeah they don't move very much so it's not a one percent is not a lot when you don't have a lot of money but options allow you to do leverage but the thing with options are as a derivative they become much more complex and because i was so interested in that i ended up wanting to do that as a career or at least as part of my career and i wanted to do it well and to be able to understand the options market on a non-retail level you do need some sort of technical background or at least enough math to understand and when you want to go into an options trading firm

i really think that you really do need to have some sort of technical analysis either whether it be a math degree a computer science degree even a physics degree or some type of research based degree could be undergrad or grad school but because that was my interest i ended up choosing mcit and going that direction yeah i think you were mentioning it as well it was either computer science physics or math grade those are the people who usually go into yeah just the degrees that tend to have more exposure to math there's some people who do like econ from you chicago is a really famous program that's a really math heavy econ that would be perfectly fine as well it's just a lot of the whether it's the interview question or the day-to-day um it ends up being a lot more mathematical than traditional finance now i know some of the interviews are super notorious for having absurd questions your day-to-day would never look like that but they are clearly screening for a certain type of individual yeah that's actually a good segue uh so my first question uh after just the intro is like what exactly does a quant trader do because we hear this term being thrown around a lot and it's like oh this person's a quantum firm you know they like trade but with models like what does that mean

so it's difficult to pinpoint exactly for each person because whether you're a coin trader at a bank or you're a con trader at a high frequency prop shop or you're a quant trader at a hedge fund your day's gonna look different even within those specific categories depending on where you are so for me and for the more senior traders that i see the easiest way to explain it would be you know in the morning you're still going through the same things as many other traders you're still looking at news that's coming out the market the difference is you are more involved with how am i going to use my tools to respond today rather than maybe what is the fundamental analysis of microsoft today like how has that changed um so just through a general day-to-day uh the first thing i'll do is i'll look at news i'll see what's happening i'll see oh how if the fundamentals on a technical level change so fundamentals of the market rather than fundamentals of a company how has that changed then i'll look at stock charts in the morning how things have moved uh since i'm taking an options firm the most important things to me are the greeks if your guys are not too into options yet they're the drivers behind the price of options and how things will move so what i'll look at is oh how do i think these specific aspects these greeks will change today how has the underlying price of the stock uh so the greeks are the really five but um in this really low interest area environment four uh aspects of pricing that deal with the options famous options models now there's a number of them but the one that most people know is the black trolls model uh without getting too deep in it because this question is just about day to day they're really about how the options move and how we expect them to move and they're completely based as a whole they're they are mathematically founded but the way they change is based off of the way price is changing how do prices change you know which is disappointing to me like anything else so when these options prices are changing that's what i'm analyzing in the morning how do i think the prices will change where do i think opportunity will be um and then i'm waiting for you know the opening bell 8 30 options don't change oh i'm in chicago some 8 30. options don't change or don't trade before market um as a general rule so i wait for that 8 30 bill i get all my analysis and i watch how things move and then from then until 3 30 again because of chicago um around the three o'clock i am looking just to make trades that are going to either make money in the long term when i see inefficiencies mispricings maybe they're something i want to get in immediately and get out maybe there's something that i want to hold it's really not too different from somebody who'd be trading stock it's just what i'm trading is different because again options firm and the way i'm looking at it is very model heavy um i'm going to have a bunch of tools up all the time i'm going to be looking at those tools for different signals or different notifications that might uh spark my interest or tell me that something might be an opportunity and then after three o'clock mostly just you know checking my models i'm not on an automated strategy so i'm still putting through all of my trades i'm using the quantitative side to let me know so i'll be uh changing those tools if i think they're off or monitoring them making some changes one of the great parts of being on the quant side rather than traditional site is pretty much once i'm done maybe an hour past that i'm done you know unless the model's completely broken down there's nothing else to do um the office market also doesn't trade after three o'clock so i all the time after that as long as there's no risk of an options being exercised it's really just model analysis and then you know you're done for the day let's talk about a uh well known fact yeah you know it's still shrouded in mystery we know that quad training is an

extremely lucrative career sometimes stressful but still very lucrative and there hasn't been actually that much information about you know how much people make how much to expect and what's the career so if you don't mind um maybe even go into a little bit more detail but like what's the how much money do you expect to make just coming in entry level maybe like two years down the line five years ten years sure um i'll talk in really general terms uh you know for for privacy issues for my firm but also because i think it's more applicable to talk in general terms uh so when we think about quantitative funds most of the time they're pretty well known in the sense that at least in the market they have some sort of reputation uphold right so we're not talking about these firms where you're coming in and having to bring your own capital and trade your account they're not these types of firms so the quantitative firms are going to have as a whole a higher starting salary and a lot of the reason for that is their competition is you know people going to data science people going to engineering who might be more into the trading side um people who would be doing research these people who have opportunities which tend to pay more and due to that the base salary tends to be in the higher five figures into the six figures and when you include signing bonus it can get wild there's people who have signed for some of the bigger name firms you know the citadels the uh j-2s of the world who have two hundred thousand three hundred thousand dollar signing bonuses but that is definitely exception to the rule i think your first year minus your bonus if there is one for performance you can expect a high five figures into the six figures depending on where it is some of the firms definitely pay less but there are rewards that they give you on the other side or some other sort of compensation whether it be intellectual compensation through teaching or rather it be you know higher portions of bonuses later i think you have a lot less risk in the quantitative side getting a firm that's really shady they don't tend to exist so much it's a lot higher barrier to entry you know you have a lot of tech that you need to run right they have a lot of expenses that these other firms don't have so you don't get these like chop shops where some guy came in and he's like oh bring your money and we'll give you 80 right but you know if you lose right that's not really something we see what about like so uh i know the training period also varies like maybe a year maybe two years but after the training period um say like your first two to five years how much are we expecting here um i know there's a lot of stories about quant firms pumping out eight figure bonuses and stuff like that and it definitely does exist but i'd say at the five year mark you're probably an experienced trader but not a senior one so definitely mid six figures we're talking five hundred thousand dollars three to seven hundred thousand dollars is a very safe bet now uh if you go definitely higher than that you know if your firm has a fantastic year or if you're a very high performer maybe you get maybe you're an early desk lead or maybe you get your own group to run in those cases hey who knows maybe you are getting that seven figure eight figure bonus by that time um but i think mid six figures is reliable high six figures in a good year very reliable as well um many quant firms do well when there's a lot of volatility the quantitative models do well when people are moving the market around and they tend to do less well when the market is not volatile so you know years like 2008 right now election years the quad firms do well and people tend to you know of course do well with them and let's say uh after five years you know once you're considered senior wear dust head how much are we expecting here when you get into a desk head i think you can consider the bonus on the scale of a senior vp or an md trader or i've anchor at a you know large bulge bracket so i don't want to say like oh hey you're gonna become a desk kind of nick eight figures like that's not something that i can promise and that will depend so much on firm and how good your desk performs under you but you're definitely getting into these very high level bonuses these bonuses that you hear about the bonuses where if you go on glass store and look up these huge name companies you see like the very extreme on the right hand side you know that could be a lot of money that's realistic at that time period that is a lot of audiences i'm like speechless because okay saying like you know some people go in um after the undergrad they're like what 21 22 right five year mark of 27 um usually and you're making mid six figures around that time reliably right so that is a lucrative position and then if you keep going up um it ends up being you know pretty much the same as an eye banker i guess like if you're going vp but there's probably a higher chance because i feel like you're in banking or consulting it's harder for you to move that much higher level yeah the one thing i mentioned is in eye banking for the vp level there aren't so many and there's a lot of reasons for that you know i'd be dropped out or i think the dropout is so high yeah um but also there aren't that many vps right and the time period to get to that senior vp level can be 15 years right the time to get to an empty level could be another five to ten years past that you really don't know and mds are actually limited right you only have one per group and they aren't spitting out new groups for you um and then on that side you know compensation is probably acceptably similar it might be higher for some mbs in an investment bank and it might be higher for some um very senior traders at a quant fund the one thing i would warn about is that in other career paths like investment banking usually the reason that people leave is they don't enjoy the work anymore they want to do something else you know in software engineering it's very similar people don't enjoy the work they want to do something else but

most firms most high-end firms who aren't looking over your shoulder worrying did i not perform well this year at a lot of fun funds that is the danger so you do get this higher potential salary five years down the line but you may be giving up salaries day one you might be giving up salary in day one and you might you know have that added pressure of always needing to perform right your job is really tight to your performance you don't get the opportunity to perform poorly and say well you should keep me on right you know what i did yeah that's also what you guys have uh like your base is obviously pretty good but the most money comes from the bonus right yes it's almost all you know it's all performance based realistically once you're down there the base is a negligible portion of what you're making right cool so we actually had a lot of interest from our viewers as well um about like there there's a lot of interest in terms of quant trading the role differences between the roles so why don't we get into some of the questions um that people submitted all right so first up is from the final ultimatum seeing as these type of rules aren't too

common i'd like to know uh what entices people to go into roles as a quant trader in the first place as well as what channels you would need to look at to even get a quant trader interview in the first place um yeah there's definitely fewer roles here than in traditional trading and definitely in banking but i don't think it's that few i think there's a number of firms uh there's probably five to seven firms which are very big names and then another five to seven that are regional and then a bunch of smaller ones uh heavily centered in chicago if you're in the us um so as far as what entices people that's a difficult question for me to answer but you know as we talked about from my background it was something i was always interested in trading and i was interested in the quantitative side of things so it was an easy combination of the two i think there's a lot of people who are matthew who want to do finance there's a lot of people who enjoy the dynamic part of markets it's like honestly i know it's a cliche but the day is always different like there's always a new challenge those are some of the big ones people who like finance who are math people who like challenges people who like dynamic jobs um definitely some people who are interested in money you know that's definitely a thing in finance in general yeah you get some of that um but definitely the other categories are generally what you see um what channels i would choose to look at you know you if you google just like best quant funds you're going to get a name of the five to ten biggest funds right uh some of them don't some of them have smaller hiring quotas they aren't hiring all the time some of them are hiring every year they always have a program um i'd say there are around five that are always hiring and then there are a number of regional firms who will be hiring regardless of where you are of course you know new york um chicago definitely is number one um but any big city at least we'll have a few uh definitely reach out there where you go to school if you're you know not in the us it's a little bit harder for me to give you recommendations but definitely like the european major cities and across the us will have options uh the difficulty will be finding the really small firms those ones you're gonna have to google around or go on linkedin and find you know they're looking for one or two people but it's always worth it to give a shot send in a resume you never know and just because there's uh there are a number of firms but there are less jobs than other industries you know take your shot right once you get into the industry everything becomes easier after that that's true it's always the first step

all right second question i am sorry if i'm butchering all of your names i'm going to try my best from burke okay burke do you see anyone from a non-traditional background that holds a quantitative role he says i really like math but i don't exactly have the job experience they look for guess i'm wondering what's the most important set of things to land such a role i mean i feel like you yourself kind of have a non-tradition yeah i'm i'm somebody who was doing um you know some of the more accelerated math before college and then completely nothing uh finances of at in most schools finance is a very non-math major right and econ at a non-math school is a non-math major so i am myself um am not you know a traditional candidate what i would say is you need to know enough math to pass the interview it's not hard math it's something that you can learn there's a number of books about it there's one i can't remember at the top of my head but i'll let you know and then you know you can put it in the description or something but really if you just google for glassdoor questions a lot of brain teases a lot of mental math a lot of probability but it's not high level graduate level probability theory um what i would say is that it helps to have you know every market is like every job is like this they're always like oh well part of the requirements is having done something in the job right so it definitely helps but if you show interest and you know how to pass the interview there aren't enough firms that will give you the benefit of the doubt to throw you that first interview uh just like in engineering the first interview in most of the quant funds is this automated online test right it's not gonna be an engineering test most of the time it's gonna be some type of math test some type of speed math or some type of logic brain teaser math if you can pass that test you know you're on the same foot as everybody else yeah so there's definitely opportunity definitely helps to have a little bit of background but that background can be achieved you know by um participating in some type of program that gives you that uh technical background or i not i wouldn't recommend like you go out and make your own trading algorithm but if you're still in college maybe being in a club that does that or reaching out to your network as long as you can get that first interview that's the major barrier to entry and i like yourself because you were trading beforehand um i guess that was something that was also yeah that's a fantastic one as well if you're trading what that firm wants they might extend you an interview just off of that um you know the first round interview is so cheap for these funds and for these companies that have these automated systems it's really nothing to them so as long as you can get to that stage and pass it you're on a really good track yeah awesome uh so the next question is from

toros theory uh do you need trading related projects or have some rough idea about the domain is enough i guess that's kind of so yeah that's related but i'd say there's like two separate things there the first one is trader related projects you don't have to but like any other thing you're building an image that the company is going to like or not like to get there to be interviewed in the first place right so let's say i'm an english major who has never done anything has nothing related to finance trading anything you know maybe you go out and you make like a cool project that you're interested in doesn't need to be super complex you like go analyze some data and have something or you participate in a club or you do some online program even just something to show some interest in the area right um because they will notice that you're doing that and like i said before getting the automated interview isn't too tough so as long as you show some interest you

have a better shot than the person who didn't and that's sometimes all it takes now having some rough domain rough idea about the domain i would say in many cases that's enough but it depends on your background so as somebody who did finance and then wrote i have options knowledge a lot of the firms would grill me on that knowledge so you should be careful about overstating what you do know because retail options and you know sophisticated options are two very different worlds and i got into trouble in the beginning of my interview process specifically my first year of mcit when i was doing interviews by presenting myself as somebody more sophisticated than i was you get once you pass those first couple interviews that are um either the first uh automated one and then like the low level first in person one the next person up is probably someone more senior and they're going to throw you something based off of what they think you know if you're somebody again to go back to the english or history major example who doesn't have an options background but showed some interest and is now there they're not going to throw you some ridiculous question to try to grill you but if you're somebody who's claiming hey i trade options by myself i at least know something about them they're going to test that right they want to make sure you're legit and that you're not pretending to be someone else so domain knowledge is enough but be careful about overstating your knowledge and know that your background does dictate kind of what you need to know and some for some people that will be a benefit they need to know a little bit less and for some people you know maybe you should sharpen up a little bit on either your math or your finance knowledge that's really interesting because it's quite different from the way that a lot of software engineering and data science interviews are because those are very standardized essentially you go through each round it's pretty much the same but this one seems much more specialized which actually makes sense that it's more personalized because you're these firms are also hiring less people yeah you know i'm sure data science is a little bit more personalized than the engineering one and then this one might be a little bit more personalized than data science yeah all right next question is from hq comp help qh how to learn about algal trading

strategies and implementing them best pathways slash things to do in university projects be a quantitative research job i think that is something that you answered already and how important are classes like real analysis measure theory advanced probability theory versus stats ml so uh like i said i'm not a math background person so i have a hole in my knowledge and some of it was made up by my own studying um getting back into retaking some of those calculus things by myself just an online you know coursera or whatever you find on youtube mit has some great courses um i have been exposed to some of real analysis and some probability theory i would say it's not on a graduate level it might be on a mid-level undergraduate level but what i did is i targeted what i knew to what would be accurate to my job which is um you know mental math brain teaser style math uh jane street is the most famous for this you shouldn't technically it does help to know math of course but in theory you can figure out all the questions without any high level math um and that's why i think the two most important areas probably to learn are probability combinatorics those are the ones that are the most logically based and most likely for you to test on um if you want to go on glassdoor i'd say the vast majority of questions are all about that and the people who are getting questions that are not are probably math undergrads or math graduate students that they're trying to see okay how quantity is this person really on the job the level of math you're using is not anything close to the courses that you were saying um or asked about those ones are much higher and i'm not trying to tell you not to take them if you're interested in math they will definitely help you on the job they're just more niche and they aren't something you'd be using day to day there's something that you as a very high level math person might incorporate in your algo um as an aside for practicing algo trading and for implementing them quantopion which is this website you can google is a fantastic resource for people who don't have access to high-level data or you know sophisticated databases that normal people wouldn't have access to quantocon lets you develop their your own algorithm it's very friendly uh if you're not you know a great python coder you can still use it you're using calls to the quantopian api it i promise you it might look a little bit complex in the beginning but you can get it and that's how i would come up with some of my own algo trading strategies for fun um and for practice if that's really something you're interested in so for the last part i know you asked about stats and ml i wouldn't say that ml or stats is particularly important for getting in would ml help you if they do have an ml group yes definitely you're going to need to know ml for that but i was never asked a single ml question stats question that wasn't probability or combinatorics related or about you know trying to gauge your ability to understand what would you take from these stats it would there was no like okay do this sort of statistical analysis on this data set and turn it into me nothing difficult like that right yeah i remember actually we were talking when you were going through interviews it sounded like so the questions weren't exactly high level math it was very logic based and they also cared a lot about speed i think that's the one factor that people may not uh realize and you touch on it a little bit as well i just kind of wanted to bring that up it's like how fast you're people think on the spot it seems like a lot of the questions were targeted at that yeah so there's a website called zmac ze tama i believe is that a max said it maybe it's e-t-m-a-c but we'll link that i think she'll link that as well um but that is the only thing that i used to practice speed i think if you get into the 40s and 50s on there this might not make too much sense but basically a mental math website um you're perfectly fine you know there's people who are getting like 70s 80s you don't need to be there um naturally i personally don't really think being super fast at math is very important but what they're trying to test is that you can think well on your feet and under pressure right so the most mental math you're ever going to do during a day is you're going to look at some pricing and say is this fair right that's a quick mental math question but you're not needing to spit out a bunch of them but that is definitely something they're going to be testing you on and when you need to pass the interview that is something i think everybody should at least take a few tries at the zeta mac website to brush up and make sure they're in that you know 40 50 range to make sure

they're safe so the next question is from rashad saeed i'm paraphrasing a little bit from our conversation so what are the differences in the rules between trader data analytics and quant researcher or whatever other roles there are sure so the three biggest roles of three things that most people know about would be trader quant researcher and engineer quant engineer trading engineer they're all pretty quant developer yeah they're all essentially the same thing um so as a general sense the trader is the person putting in trades this means different things to different firms if you're a very low touch firm the trader is essentially risk analysis and risk balancing um you are there to put in trades at a low touch firm remember that somebody else has developed an algorithm for um at a high touch firm and that's still quant you are putting in trades that an algorithm exists for but you're using discretion and you're better understanding at the market to decide whether you want to put them on in this case you're not just managing risk what you're doing is making decisions so yeah that's um at my firm we are much higher touch than some of the other quantitative firms so not only would i probably be making my own algorithm to begin with i will also be only most of the time depending on the group of course depending on a lot of other factors i'm going to be using it as a tool to help rather than making decisions for me uh so that's a general overview of trading so it can run between the risk management side all the way to the decision making side um but in a quantum you're always using some quant sort of tool so for a quantum researcher is the famous you know like phd style you don't have to be but most of them are phd style role where you're making an algorithm or you're doing some data analysis and saying these are buy signals these are cell signals these are signals where this leads to this these are the roles where you know people are getting paid big bucks right out of grad school what they're doing is they are making models that require graduate level knowledge most of the time and those models are making decisions quant researchers at firms that are very high touch which means that basically people are putting in trades may actually be called traders and the people who are more quantity would just consider themselves quant researchers but they're still traders at the firm rather than people who are less quantity and using it just for analysis would just consider themselves traditional traders and then engineers are pretty much like engineers everywhere else the only difference is now instead of doing engineering for a you know software company or finance company you definitely have more responsibility and you're more front office than somebody at a bank but you're still doing what you'd expect at an engineering job do you make more if you're a quant developer as opposed to just a normal developer um it's hard to say exactly and i don't have too much domain knowledge about that but you definitely do have profit sharing okay you probably you will you'll give up the investing of stock as most of these companies don't have any stock in exchange for the profit sharing and that you know it gets dicey depending on your experience depending on the firm i would guess at the super quant funds like a two sigma you probably are making a ton of money being a quant uh engineer or you know some type of developer a quant developer but i don't i wouldn't be able to put a number on it right now right yeah i mentioned that because i've talked to people who wanted to go and become developers because they're like oh i'm doing engineering anyway and the hours are pretty much the same but i also get to invest in fun so that's kind of why they made that transition

final question by booker is how stressful is it how often do people get fired how long do people stay in the line i heard that each decision you make could potentially cost the firm a lot of money so it's extremely stressful and unsustainable in the long run but then again the money you make from those few short years would be enough for life well i guess hopefully uh that would be the optimal case but how stressful is it training is definitely not a low stress job but like anything else the enjoyment you get from it or how stressful it is to you depends on if you chose it because your personality was a good fit if that makes sense um it's like asking like well how stressful is it to be like an athlete right so if you love being an athlete and you love the sport you play you love that adrenaline right you go out there and you're like i love being challenged every day um and like in any other thing when you're an athlete if you play poorly you risk getting benched um in training if you're poor you risk getting risk tapping on your shoulder and saying hey do better or you know in the worst possible case risk saying hey we're going to let you go um i would say people tend to stay in the line um it's like biased in one of two directions either you're there for the long haul because you love it or you're out quickly because you don't like the work and you don't have any fun doing it um there are people who get fired because things don't go well but i would say the risk of getting fired is firm dependent you're more worried about your firm not doing well than anything else you're worried about the case where the firm took a really bad strategy and that causes them not to be able to hire as many traders the next year in the bigger firms this isn't really much of a concern it's more in the really small ones what was the other part i think you answered most of it um yeah oh here we go yeah i think he actually answered most of it um so i guess like that the last part is like how long do people usually stay oh yeah i guess going back to that i would say like maybe at a certain firm i'm seeing people stay i don't know 10 to 15 years but that's it's like again one of two it's influenced so much by one of two outcomes right either you're out one to three years in after training right including training right so you're really out one year after training because you just decide you hate it or you're just you know some people just that isn't for them and that's fine right but on the other hand i'm seeing a lot of people at my firm at the previous firm that i was doing an extended internship at they're there for like 20 30 years pretty much they go there and they stay there um and those are the people who it's for them right and these are reputable firms high dollar firms that don't deal so much with the interior turnover so to summarize the two things are one do you like it if you don't like it you're probably not going to stay and the second one is the firm very exposed to certain market conditions firms that tend to be more exposed take more risks on yeah maybe they have great years but then there's going to be years where they lay off a lot of people so those are really the two reasons why and you know the second one you can get out of by choosing to go to a firm if those firms are recruiting at the time that uh is more diverse in terms of strategy and won't have that risk and the first one you know it really depends on the person yeah i mean bottom line is it's similar with software engineer or data science if yeah the money is good i mean the money is even better here but if you don't like what you're doing you know it's going to be rough and you know especially if it's such a high-risk part like you guys are pretty performance-based so i would assume you know it's a lot harder to sustain that if you just really don't like your job yeah and i would mention that too there are people who go into software engineering because it's such a generous salary and the job is in some cases a place where they can you know have less stress and they can develop things that they want to do or that the firm or that their company i guess uh wants them to do and they don't need to worry about getting fired for the most part in trading in the beginning a lot of people have a hard time if they're not really into it because they don't have in many cases that super high salary they're not looking for it during the training period because they're not trading their own book they're not trading to make money and they're stressed every day right so if it sounds like oh like one i could be making more money because these people are probably intelligent enough to be a software engineer most of the time i could be making more money doing something else and i could have more fun during my day doing something else right then this probably isn't something that they're going to want to do and they're probably going to leave yeah i mean one to two years of training you know you're like oh if i do that and i stay for five years then i can make you know half a million dollars that's a really long time that actually still is to do something that you don't like so yeah and the amount of money you're making over those first few years is honestly less right so for people who that's an important consideration that's just one more thing that they need to think about all right super fun lightning round um

lighting around is when i ask you questions that i make up in my head right now because i didn't think of them yet and then you'll answer them generally just try to answer them a little like quickly but if you want to expand on that feel free to do it as well so first question let's see uh if you couldn't be a trader what would you do would you go back to eye banking no i would definitely go back and dive in that's a really hard question yeah i guess the thing i was doing after i was very unhappy following eye thinking was i just started playing piano again so maybe i would do something in music but music's a really hard field oh yeah and it's not something i could have confidently said i'm doing this because i'm so passionate about it so at the time it was just like it's a good hobby okay cool uh what are you gonna spend your first fat bonus are you by no i don't think i'd be able to anyway um i don't know uh i guess save it is the appropriate investment again yeah invest it again in your personal account there you go that is how you know you're a real trader you make money don't even spend it you want to make more money okay cool um let's see uh if you were to redo your path right i mean if maybe you don't want to redo your path like you know if so if you wanted to redo your path what would you change would you still have gone like in terms of your undergraduate stuff

done what you did and then i guess you wouldn't go to high banking because you don't like it yeah so i always i'm really uh i guess reticent about this question because the path that you went on kind of caused you to become who you are right but assuming that i am still the same person i think the best stuff to do in undergrad honestly is some type of quantitative major um anybody can do finance after being too quantitative but people in finance have a much harder time going the other way and knowing what i know now that this is what i want to do i'm having so much fun doing it it would have helped me shorten the path and get there sooner and be better by having done that quantitative stuff first instead of later okay last question what's 32 times 18 but that actually is representative of the question anyone asking right yeah that is the type of question i'm not gonna make you do it on camera no there's too much pressure on camera to do that okay cool um yeah i mean those are that's pretty much everything that i had um so don't get discouraged if

it isn't the first year if it is in the second year if you're an undergraduate student or if you're a professional trained to change just keep trying to stack the deck in your favor keep trying to do things which look strong and attractive whether that be working on things that you're interested in or sharpening up on your mathematical skills definitely is going to help you in the interview um both of those things eventually will help you become a stronger candidate um this definitely isn't something i want to reiterate where if you don't have the knowledge you can just jump in and you know day one you're ready um it will take some time to develop it fair so thank you again so much for coming on the show um i really appreciate it and i also learned a lot myself as well i'm sure you guys are as well um yeah giving us some insight into this mysterious field of of quant training and hedge funds so yeah thank you again thank you for having me alright i will see you guys in the next video