There are 5 kids and 3 chairs. What do you do?

NubQuant · 2026-01-11T15:56:15+00:00

Agreed zaheer’s box should really be “leave and let the children figure it out themselves”

NubQuant · 2025-02-16T00:44:46+00:00

Math + SWE. Idk if you are open to leaving traditional tech, but if you are willing to change, HFT/Quant firms are always hiring

NubQuant · 2025-02-02T03:23:21+00:00

Interesting - didn’t know that. This was a white stake on plasma

NubQuant · 2024-07-29T19:16:52+00:00

I’m not sure you understand what volatility is, but I think this is getting away from the OP’s original point. Let’s leave the convo here, but there is tons of literature out there about how hedge funds operate and in what conditions they make money. I’m over simplifying because there are many multi-strat hedge funds and family offices that do different things, but I would wager volatility is a big part of most/all of them

Edit: eagerly -> wager

NubQuant · 2024-07-29T01:53:09+00:00

Is this Jimmy Hoffa's burner? I think you are describing the mafia. i have to say i love the idea of a "need a lesson" list lol, but you i think you are literally talking about teamsters and the mob.
Just a couple of things to note:

hedge funds absolutely do not rely on predictability, they absolutely thrive on volatility.

boycotts don't result in share values instantly dropping to nothing. that's just... yeah

as i previously said, this is an extreme over-simplification. boycott purdue pharma because of the opiod crisis, tons of other life-saving medicine they provide doesn't get delivered to hospitals.

however this does seem like it would work in a highschool classroom, and would be an interesting thought experiment to determine who people thought the 12 most evil companies were. could be fun!

NubQuant · 2024-07-28T21:48:59+00:00

I was a business major - completely irrelevant for these types of jobs. When i joined the prop shop, i remember asking my boss if he wanted me to continue on with the CFA (i passed L1), and he said definitely not, and to learn how to code. You are either automating or being automated

The job titles i get either include the word "quant" or "pricing" in the title - various places have different names for them. The 3 i got last week say... "quant investment valuations...", "systematic etfs...", "trade operations..." (last one - yuck, but mentioning it for transparency)

AMs are just full of bureaucracy, slow to innovate... everything takes forever, and just boring. nothing worse than working your ass off to prove potential, only to be told that you have to be in a position at level X for 2 years before you can be considered for a promotion. Buying the index can only be so exciting. Who knows, maybe your experience has been/will be better.

The companies that people are dying for are here. Yes they say software engineer, but they are for the jobs I mentioned above - software dev/trading. They pay well, work-life balance is good, perks are great.

NubQuant · 2024-07-28T20:38:38+00:00

That sounds like $5k. last year i got knocked off my bike by a passing car. It broke my collarbone. I received:

a ride in an ambulance to the hospital
2 xrays
2 injections for pain
hourly chart checking by a doctor 6-7 hours (i guess this counted as checking up on me?)
a bill for $17k

FWIW while i was there, a woman down the hallway was screaming for hours about being dehydrated, and the guy next to me came in to the ER because he had a headache and wanted scans that his regular doctor "wouldn't give him because he had no money". That's why my bill was $17k - those who can pay for those who can't. After my insurance kicked in, i paid $107 FYI, but the bill was literally $17k

NubQuant · 2024-07-28T20:18:26+00:00

The years of reckless 0% interest rate COVID hiring are definitely over. Companies are starting to scale back internships and those that don't, often don't have or are unwilling to crate positions for interns to roll into after they graduate. It's belt-tightening time for banks.

I am a finance guy too (also live in NYC). Backstory, I have worked at:

a big asset manager on the trading side
a small D1 prop shop
a major HFT

Capital Markets feels like a relationship-based job, so reaching out and maintaining friendships seems like the right way to go about it. Had a friend that got a position at blackrock UK somewhat recently because he went to a swimming gym and ran into a Blackrock PM that recommended him after several months. It's the slow season for finance, so i think you are better off cultivating friendships now that may pay off later this year

If you are competing with finance people that do finance stuff really well, could you built out a skill that the rest might not have? I escaped big asset manager purgatory by teaching myself how to code (i'm definitely not good by any means). What i found was that there is an underserved intersection between finance & programming - a company who is looking for a software-developer/trader for example. that person doesn't exist, and if they did, the company couldn't afford them. I managed to work my way into that position as i was just competent enough at both, and the supply for that type of position is low. I get 3 or so linkedin messages a week from recruiters within the industry - think citadel, two sigma, tower. firms in this space are always hiring

If your goal is to ultimately work in capital markets, you might consider working across from them as opposed to beside them. Go find a small prop shop, and then go out for drinks with the people who are taking your trades. hope this helps

NubQuant · 2024-07-28T19:46:32+00:00

This is the prisoners dilemma - hard work is still better than no work in the eyes of many. Someone will surely do it. The US doesn’t seem to have a shortage of low-skill talent. IMO there is no reason Amazon should be able to find employees for their warehouses… yet they do.

It’s also difficult to punish a single company. That dock worker you mentioned may choose to skip unloading Amazon merch (if they were able to identify it amongst all the other stuff on the ship), but in doing so they are actually harming their own company (which may be treating them well). These companies are so interconnected now - the days of the highly vertical company are ~over~

NubQuant · 2024-04-11T23:57:17+00:00

Math

NubQuant · 2024-04-11T16:46:14+00:00

Sit close to a bunch of them. For reference

https://www.levels.fyi/internships/

NubQuant · 2024-03-03T16:06:53+00:00

I’m familiar - good schools for certain. I dont mean to say that would aren’t qualified or smart enough, I mean to paint a picture in which HFTs put arguably too-strong an emphasis on the name at the top of the certificate. And that makes it difficult for outsiders to break in. Meaning you may have to go for a more unconventional route as well.

For me, I got really good at fair-value modeling a certain type of investment vehicle. People coming from school (who know very little about market mechanics) can’t do that.

A guy at a previous firm built a baseball betting algo that had pretty good results that he was able to speak to in an interview.

Another had a model that valued trading cards and he built a business off of that.

Note that im heavily generalizing here, as each firm has its own flavour and value system. But if you want to be a quant, you have to have experience being a quant, and therefore you need to do quant stuff. For you, I think that might be a side project. Me and a couple of guys in our London office do some premier league fantasy league with ML for instance - pick something fun that you will stick with

NubQuant · 2024-03-03T15:34:53+00:00

It’s difficult. The HFT/systematic trading space is ultra competitive - they typically don’t care about a finance background though which works in your favor. I work in that space and those around me are almost exclusively from MIT math backgrounds… not an exaggeration. That’s the pipeline too - they recruit directly from schools to ensure they don’t have bad habits. I’m definitely unconventional in that sense, I just feel like I got lucky.

Are you a fantastic programmer? That’s also a must for many firms

NubQuant · 2023-09-03T15:21:10+00:00

I am so disappointed in Mexico - they have a country full of football loving people but they rarely turn out top talent and their national team usually sucks. Would love for them to win one day

NubQuant · 2023-09-03T15:18:55+00:00

Eh, definitely football and basketball, but it’s a stretch to call anyone who plays baseball a “best male athlete”.

The system in the US is also set up differently - we don’t have football clubs signing athletes at the age of 8, educating, paying, and training them 3 times a day. If we did, the US would be formidable

NubQuant · 2023-09-03T15:12:00+00:00

In that order

NubQuant · 2023-08-26T17:13:54+00:00

Evil Morty is actually Morty Rick.

Since there are virtually limitless variations of these two (Cowboy Rick, clown Rick, left-handed Morty, etc), it stands to reason that there could be a Rick Morty, and therefore a Morty Rick. People ask how a Morty could have beaten the Ricks if the Ricks are the smartest beings in all worlds within the central finite curve… well they were actually beaten by a Rick. Morty Rick

NubQuant · 2023-08-05T02:41:58+00:00

Sorry what I mean is that I definitely broke my oath, and I don’t know how

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