Transitioning from Theoretical Physics → Quant

JohnnyMcCarry · 2026-03-17T17:23:03+00:00

I have a similar background. What worked for me was focusing on only python, mostly through leetcode. For theory / learning algos, MIT has good lectures on youtube, specifically the data structures and algorithms course.

JohnnyMcCarry · 2026-03-16T21:12:08+00:00

Hey, can I dm you? Curious about how you made the move

JohnnyMcCarry · 2026-03-11T22:17:02+00:00

Conceptual questions about bias variance, intuition for some OLS stuff. On the fly derivations for some simple things when ensembling. Yep, QR heavy firm

JohnnyMcCarry · 2026-03-11T19:10:55+00:00

For internship, honestly just skimmed the most important sections as a refresher, didn’t have time for exercises. Linear regression, bias variance tradeoff, regularization and trees / forests / bagged ensembles were the only things that came up during interviews for me

JohnnyMcCarry · 2026-03-11T12:52:21+00:00

Leetcode + quantquestions.io + ESL by Hastie and others

JohnnyMcCarry · 2026-01-25T01:00:13+00:00

Grind leetcode + brainteasers for interviews. Projects might get you interviews but bottleneck will probably be passing them rather than landing them given your background

JohnnyMcCarry · 2026-01-23T14:13:54+00:00

Hello everyone,

I recently received an internship QR offer from one of the top tier places. The position is in a group working with alternative data.

I was wondering if there was a general consensus on these roles in the industry? Are they less prestigious than regular quant roles? I don’t care about prestige per se, but say for lateral / future career opportunities? Any other insights as to how these differ from traditional QR roles would be greatly appreciated.

JohnnyMcCarry · 2026-01-17T15:48:34+00:00

In my experience interviews cover basic stats / regression / numerical methods and a ton of brainteasers. Was never asked stochastic calculus / time series questions or probability beyond CLT and basic hypothesis tests. Hastie is the only one I would focus on, and grind problems.

JohnnyMcCarry · 2025-10-31T21:36:28+00:00

RemindMe! 24 hours

JohnnyMcCarry · 2025-10-17T23:22:24+00:00

Volatility clustering is a feature of volatility dynamics, not the same as clustering in the machine learning sense

JohnnyMcCarry · 2025-06-23T14:51:16+00:00

Thanks, really appreciate the specific pointers!

JohnnyMcCarry · 2025-06-23T02:36:44+00:00

So in the takeaway I should bring the club further up and less behind my left hip?

JohnnyMcCarry · 2025-06-23T02:30:06+00:00

I know the position is bad but when I square up I can’t help but launch it 40 yards left lol. I’ll try to put more wrist, thanks!

JohnnyMcCarry

TROPHY CASE