One of the things I appreciate in you is the humbleness. You had the courage to admit to yourself you weren't a fit for a trader despite really wanting to become one. And thanks to that you were able to move on! A lot of people, myself included, have a problem with accepting they're not good enough in some area, because of ego issues and stuff.
I second this statement. I thought he was going to cope and rationalize about how the culture is rude, etc, but he openly said he couldn’t pass the speed interviews. He’s clearly smart enough to do deep quant work though because he’s a deep thinker more than a fast thinker. I’m the same way, so I’m also a quant and his point is very relatable.
I am going to start my Financial Engineering masters in fall 2021 and I was confused as to whether to focus on trading or risk mgmt. I don't think I'd be able to get this insight in 20 hours of googling what you've covered in 15 mins. Thanks a ton Dimitri!
Best advice. We have to find our strengths and weaknesses and hone on to strengths to succeed. Not every artist is Picasso, not every businessman is Elon musk, and not every scientist is Albert Einstein but we all have our own role to play and life is too short to play someone else role.
HI dimitri, i just want to thanks you for all your videos and show how is the finance world, the hiring, education etc. Im a BA bachelor student in chile, southamerica and your channel has been very important in the process of choose my mayor, so thanks
Hi Dmitri, I’m interested in maybe becoming a structurer for an investment bank; it’d be great if you could make a video on that if you get time. Like for instance, is it more fast-thinking like trading or deep-thinking like the role you do in risk management, what skills do you require, what should you read to better understand the role etc. Thank you so much, your vids are great
@@FcoManjon Structuring sounds super interesting. Too bad the only textbooks I can find are from before 2008. The business must have changed by a lot since then.
But the “fast” thinking of traders has to be acquired through experience. If you decided that you don’t have it early in your career, then you won’t have it
many people are not $ motivated/driven. It's more about intellectual rigor/challenge/academia/solving a puzzle stimulation for them. Trading is not for 99%. Traders (profitable ones) are cut from a different cloth counter to majority of the population, psychoemotionally/mentally. Automated/systematic & manual/discretionary trading is a very particular skill set.
Thanks for a unique perspective, Dmitri! I have a question.. You mention implementing trading models in C++. With the recent and continued growth of languages like Python and R, which would you recommend an aspiring quant researcher to be proficient at, Python or C++? Cheers, mate!
C++ or C is for the situation when you don't want to waste you CPU cycles, electricity, and computation resouces (to buy more computation power in the cloud or buy more workstations than you could). Python and R are extremely slow not only for production, but in some cases for research as well. However R and Python are convenient for certain non-production tasks, visualization, exploration of data, preparation of datasets, and for using standard _light_ statistical tests (for the latter, especially R, because the Python statistical modules are too immature, non-rigourous, and sometimes buggy). Numpy (written in C), and modules based on its structures, does make everything faster than on pure Python, sadly not so much as one could achieve on pure C++ or C. It's good news nonetheless that Python is itself written in C (not C++), so it can be easily combined with C code (call separate custom compiled C functions). My short answer: one needs to learn all C, C++, Python, and R. And if one is forced to work in Windows (server or desktop), then C# and .NET as well.
For research and data analysis I would go with R, Python, Julia, SQL,... etc. it all depends on situation. If my data is stored in a relational DB of course I'll use SQL, if the data is somewhere on the web probably I'll chose Python web scraping. But the final implementation which will be my trading system I will definitely choose Java. Java is a very mature platform, and it is ideal for this kind of job. I would definitely avoid C/C++ mostly because it will require me to manage the memory myself, and this will increase the time-to-market. But.... my implementation most likely will have some kind of simulation like MonteCarlo, and here I'll use CUDA or OpenCL, and it will require C/C++, but only in this part of the system, everything else will be Java
I think with trading, we sometimes need to solve problems in 5 mins, but some days you have several hours to solve problems. :).However, I love trading.
Can you make a video possibly explaining why you shouldn’t follow teachings of channels like ziptader, or clay trader? Is it bad to learn how to trade from them? They both talk about risk management etc.. like what’s the big deal if you’re just trading off of support and resistance?
Omg I'm feeling the same way studying my finance degree. I'm planning to get FMVA before graduation to have a working foundation with excel. I thought I was the only one who thought the program is vague
One question I have is why do we need to be a quick thinker provided we're doing algorithmic trading and not manual trading? So we can take our time to build the algorithm. Isn't it?
You still have to monitor your algorithm and decide if it is working. There aren't magical models that you just click run, walk away for a week and come back to piles of money. I'm not sure what country you are in but in the US there are a lot of rules about using algo models and monitoring is a key piece. Also the markets move quickly and you need a new algo/model fast. Often you can't develop very quick so traders can utilize overly simplified algos knowing they have issues.
@@DimitriBianco Like here in Ireland, there are 2 roles in most firms, one of the trading analyst and one of the quant researcher, so do quant researchers need to be quick thinkers as well?
Do you still think that an MFE is a good path to quant finance? I've recently read that PHDs are becoming even more commonplace and expected. I'm starting college next year planning to major in math and I'm trying to find the best path to get into quant finance. I've watched your videos for a few years now and I'd really appreciate your current viewpoint on this
Hey Bianco, I was wondering what is your opinion on network theory and the use cases in finance and/or economics. I thought you might have some sort of knowledge about it if it's used in the field since universities have started using it to model systemic risk, and if you don't you might atleast find it interesting since its in the realm of Finance/CompSci/Math Maybe make a video about it if you find it interesting? Thanks
I know it's a late response, but I recently read a paper relating the interconnectedness of financial institutions to a modified version of the Barabasi model. Really interesting stuff.
