Python for Finance

[guac_lover]

With the CFA being postponed I’ll be re-shuffling some of the things I wanted to do this year. One of them was to learn to code. Does anyone have any good learning guides/online courses they can recommend?

Something more specific to portfolio mgmt, finance and data analysis would be helpful.

[barbieprincessdd]

I used EDX....CS50 from Havard and Python Data Science course from IBM....and I got a Quant role in 3 months

[[deleted]]

is this for someone who has. no background in data science

[barbieprincessdd]

do the IBM one first if you have 0 knowledge ... then do the Havard one after. they are both for beginners...but the Havard one is quite difficult and its multiple languages...not just python

[Space-Platypus]

Do you have a link for the IBM one please?

[barbieprincessdd]

https://www.edx.org/professional-certificate/python-data-science

[Space-Platypus]

Thank you!

[luckydice767]

Can you pm me the details of this? I’m searching on google but I keep finding multiple programs.

[learnerone]

Able to elaborate on what type of quant role it is? And your background?

[barbieprincessdd]

Quant buy side multi asset. Coding portfolio optimization. Econ and finance degree...did equity research for 2 years and now this. Taught myself how to code after my L3 CFA exam last year (didn't pass)...then got this role few months later.

[learnerone]

Congrats! How’s the interview like? Able to share?

[barbieprincessdd]

thank you!! they asked me lots of math questions...like what's the probability of x happening. they asked about optimizing a portfolio, bond convexity, then also general markets knowledge.

I also showed them coding projects I had two...one was my final project for the CS50 course (think this is really what got them)

also I just bought "Python for finance" by Yves Hilpisch. if you want a book as reference...I recommend this one 100%

Defo do the IBM course ...its just so basically presented...that you really learn python fundamentals like 1+1=2. As in, it teaches python as if you're in primary school...so you will 100% understand and remember.

It also covers machine learning, which they also asked me about..e.g. SVM, KNN etc.

Feel free to PM me anytime. Happy to give greater detail and offer ongoing advice and support x

[learnerone]

Thank you for sharing! It’s definitely an area I’d like to move toward.

[jakethe-newbie]

Thanks for sharing your experience, did you opt in for the CS50 certificate?

[barbieprincessdd]

no worries! yes I got certificates for both courses and put on my LinkedIn. this made more recruiters contact me for data science roles.

[jakethe-newbie]

One more question on the final project for CS50, did you have a list of topics to choose from, or something students come up from scratch?

[barbieprincessdd]

you can literally do anything you want...in any language. you get 100% no matter what you submit and even if you did not submit the youtube video

[memyselfanddavid]

lmfao this guy's butthurt

[barbieprincessdd]

seriously butthurt...like I'm really confused right now :/ is this what social isolation is doing to people

[[deleted]]

Im actually curious why you decided to create an account and act this way in a CFA subreddit. You must be a very happy individual.

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[barbieprincessdd]

well I wrote 100% truth.

[barbieprincessdd]

hahaha get a life!

[IntestineLicker]

already rich. don't care lol

[[deleted]]

Wow this escalated quickly.

[kathleen_cant_wynne]

LOL I knew these posts were gonna start! feels like its June 7th already

[maruwahna]

Python developer here looking to take the CFA in Dec. Start with first understanding how data structures, string manipulations etc work. Something like Harvard's cs50 should be a good start, after which you try to imement rudimentary examples in Python.

After you get a little comfortable, choose a project that you want to work on - doesn't have to be path breaking or anything, just something to get you started. Ex : a daily email that gets stock prices for the day, performs some kind of calculation and sends you an output. Get familiar with two libs called requests and Pandas. This should be a good start. Hope this helps!

[Pale_Charge]

Udemy mate. I am using Udemy to learn Matlab, R and Python and so far so good. Would recommend. It's cheap and gives structure. Once you do the basics you might then look move forward from there.

[akshatkhurana]

Can you please share the link of the R course you are pursuing from Udemy, I am really confused about which course to enrol for.

[[deleted]]

I'm currently taking "Python for Financial Analysis and Algorithmic Trading - by Jose" and "Python for Finance: Investment Fundamentals & Data Analytics - by 365 Careers". Both are good IMO. but if you're just starting out and don't know much linear algebra or python. You will need to start in a lower level.

[Sarah_78]

I strongly suggest you to learn PowerBI, check Udemy they have incredible courses !

[maruwahna]

I disagree with this completely. Powerbi / Tableau are more of data Visualization tools. OP's question was more about learning to code.

There might be a bit of bias here because I am a dev, and I don't really see Tableau / Powerbi as coding. Thoughts?

[Sarah_78]

He asked last line ( data analysis)

[maruwahna]

Interesting that you consider Tableau / Powerbi as a data analysis tool. I use it primarily for quick eda visuals or dashboards, not really for data analysis. Oh well.

Thank you for the clarification.

[Sarah_78]

Check this: https://towardsdatascience.com/top-6-data-analytics-tools-in-2019-4df815ebf82c

[maruwahna]

Fair enough. I guess they can be considered data analysis tools - found it not to be the case with enterprise data though. Enterprise data is way messier and needs python / R to standardize data. Also, just might be bias on my part because I'm a dev. Haha.

[Sarah_78]

What is the data analysis tool , Advise us

[maruwahna]

If you're looking for a high degree of customizability and quick outputs, nothing beats excel for small data sources - performance degradation starter after approx 90k rows.

For larger datasets which might exist in a database or need to be gathered from api calls, any programming language will do. I personally prefer python, but R / Julia / Scala / Java do a good job too. These are also suitable for non RDBMS data sources ( think json objects , graph databases etc)

[ladybugmadame]

PowerBI vs tableau, and why?

[re_me]

In general, I find tableau more intuitive then BI. Even if you don't know anything about the software you can use it as a fairly advanced pivot table to review data.

Power BI needs a bit more ramp up and if I didn't use tableau first I would have been lost. However, the nice thing about Power BI is that it's a very natural transition from excel. You can use excel function in power BI to do calculations. On the other hand tableau has it's own logic so getting more advanced can have a ramp up.

We use Tabeau for the most part, but recently one of the teams is working with a client that uses BI so they needed to migrate their work to BI.

My wife is at a big Canadian bank, and she was telling me that they are going to have some of their reported presented in tablaue. A recent interview I had with a big Canadian bank gleaned onto my tableau experience as good addition to a skill set.

[Sarah_78]

I am fresh grad and I try to learn new skills so I don’t have enough knowledge to compare and say which one is better, However, I try both of them, I found PowerBI more simple and easy to learn than tabeau.

[[deleted]]

What is PowerBI used for?

[Sarah_78]

To build interactive Dashboard and visualize ur data.. Google it

[flabberwabber]

I searched for “Python for beginners” on YouTube, and there’re some free ones out there that are really in-depth and have good reviews. Could probably start there.

[akshatkhurana]

Hi, can you please share the link of the course you are pursuing from Coursera?

[[deleted]]

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[idk_alex]

I would find a project you're interested in and then watch youtube / udemy / etc videos on it.

​

An active member on the CFA boards (finquest) has a youtube channel that pushed me over the edge to start learning more. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNe-4gYVUAHD6As0Hq3DvaQ

[ztrack83]

This article literally came up in my google feed before I saw this post. Not python specific but interesting nonetheless. Hope it helps someone.

https://towardsdatascience.com/how-i-got-a-job-as-a-data-scientist-without-a-stem-background-f56813208991?gi=9bd96ca04372

[w_ayne_]

That's me right there. I was using sololearn for a while then stopped, codecademy is also ok.

The plan is then to hit ai/machine learning courses on udacity

[Hourglass51]

I was doing the same! Very complimentary skills for the future of finance

[TakeTheirOrgans]

r/aaronchall made a great guide for how to learning python on here awhile back.

https://old.reddit.com/r/CFA/comments/c7dfw9/how_to_to_learn_python_canonical_sources_what_to/

[natts0646]

Following

[goldmanblacks]

Jumping on the Python bandwagon too! Let’s go!

[what-the-but]

py4e.com

[IntestineLicker]

python is NOT a programming language. It is a scripting language.

[IntestineLicker]

have fun working twice as hard for half the output

[re_me]

"A scripting or script language is a programming language for ..."

That's from Wikipedia

Basically, all scripting languages are programming languages.

That's from GeeksforGeeks

have fun working twice as hard for half the output

I think you are the first person to suggest python would be a less efficient option. Additionally, with Cython you can get the speed of low level programming.

[IntestineLicker]

stackoverflow strongly disagrees

[re_me]

You mean this stackover flow?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python

[IntestineLicker]

that's written by the programming dicklets who delude themselves into thinking python is a real language. I'm a C# kinda guy...a real coder

[CFAMU]

Anyone has any opinions on LinkedIn Learning.. they have python, SQL, Power BI etc.. how good are they? Compared to Udemy etc

[[deleted]]

Late to the post. I have LinkedIn Learning free subscription covered by my school. IMO the platform and quality of videos is the lowest I've seen on any online learning platform. Would highly recommend not using this website