As I mentioned, I'm sure there are a few who are doing it successfully. I believe you.

Yeah makes sense honestly. If you went to a uni for a little while, did some stuff with your resident supercomputer, etc. you could def get access to those tools.

Last year when I left banking a lot of people were asking why I didn't just do my own consulting. This is exactly why I didn't do it.

Economy of scale. Applies to about everything

Thanks for being a part of the channel!

seriously!

Thanks for the feedback!

What did you choose in the end ?

Thanks!

I'm happy to hear it was helpful.

This is another valid point.

Short term capital gains tax

WQU can be good if you are in a country that doesn't a lot of other options. However this also means you'll be working in your country where quant finance jobs probably don't exist. This can be good though as you can enhance the skills of traditional finance in your country. Now if you are in a financial hub where there are universities offering quantitative masters, WQU is not comparable to a masters from a good university. I made a video on it and many people were upset but in reality most firms won't how online degree students over a rigorous traditional education. Here is my WQU review: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pJ5ijcans7yyqaM.html

Thanks for the response! I noticed the video is from 3 years ago. WQU recently revised their curriculum (catalog should be out in 2wks or so) and redesigned the learning platform to counter the inherent fidelity issues with online learning. So, the video might not be up-to-date . But, you are more experienced here and I value your thoughts. Because of issues with access, as you’ve noted, I’m hoping WQU can help develop all the foundational knowledge I need to possibly pursue internships, another MSc, or PhD in Quant Finance, building on my consulting experience and MBA. Also, with the proliferation of remote work, I am hoping I will not be limited to working in my country of residence as you opined, for the sake of gaining cross-border experience as I advance professionally. So, the plan is to explore all resources (beyond the lectures) to be competitive during the course of my study.

I don't follow WQU very closely but I know they originally started as a quantitative finance program when they were trying to get accredited. They later decided to move towards data science however once the accreditation started they couldn't change their curriculum and focus. I believe they are now accredited which makes since why the curriculum is changing. The main issue though is if you are in a non-financial hub country, it is nearly impossible to get a quantitative finance job there without physically being there. The US for example has the most quant finance jobs and we primarily hire only those in the US. There are security issues with doing inter-country work and the US has a ton of qualified people. It is far easier to find someone local. When I say this, this includes people from all over the world as the majority of quant finance is non-US citizens who have come here for an education. My advice would be to try and get an education in a finance hub country such as the US, UK, Singapore, or China. I know it can be expensive but you really limit your opportunities by being remote.

Thank you Dimitri. This is valuable info.

I use general diversification. I personally don't have the time or resources to spend on doing it quantitatively.

Doing it solo for a few years is a possible path to getting investors.

but when they make a mistake they don't have to live in a cardboard box

Any degree that can get you into a good MFE is enough. I don't prefer data science degrees because they often skip rigorous material in the pursuit of creating simple charts and learning packages instead of actual statistics, mathematics, and modeling.

@@DimitriBianco my bsc data science is 80% stats theory including proofs (although not required on exams) still thinks that MSc in mfe would be beneficial

Ive been trading for 11/12 years professionally previously having worked in markets. Dimitri is correct, but he assumes that you draw down completely on the profits assuming you have any and therefore don' t benefit from any compounding. Compounding is the magic in any trading operation. If you pay 20% capital gains tax, live on $30k which is achievable if you are happy to live a modest life, & put 5% return back into your capital, that $1m would turn into over $2m in 15 years time. With $2m you could put the whole lot into solid bonds & earn a $100k income which is what you'd get in a quant job & go and live on a desert island if you want) Or you could just continue trading and make more money. Now also consider that you are taxed more highly as an employee rather than an investor though out the period where you pay capital gains tax instead of employee taxes. Now you'd probably say that living on $30k is a frugal existence, and it is, but if you are dedicated to a craft which I am then its fine as I dont want to drive a fancy car, or go to expensive nightclubs or any of that stuff anyway. I dont want a boss, & enjoy independence. Just to add, that working in a corporation even a small quantitative shop you are a cog in the machine. If you want to look at the markets, study them in whatever way you wish & make money from them directly then you can do it as a private trader) Just to give an example, lets say you work in a quant shop, they might want you to work on a machine learning project trading crypto, well you might realise that this is going nowhere but since its flavour of the month the firm puts you on it. You see how it quickly become a mercenary job rather than being a real trader? Anyway I thought Id write & explain since your a trader yourself and maybe you want to transition one day! Or the transition might be made for you by your company, & when that day comes you might decide just to trade instead of looking for another job at 40 or 50 or whatever)

making 1% minimum a week is easy. Theres 50 weeks per year.

@@shichilaofa lol, let me know when you are able to do that consistently, it fundamentally doesn't work this way.

​@@rcmag13you can do more than 1% a week just fine daytrading. 1% a week is terrible

@@shichilaofa1k to 20 million in 10 years is easy, yeah right

My favorite book though fairly basic is, "Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach". The majority of issues in validation and development come down to people not understanding the model and data assumptions. My affiliate link to the book: amzn.to/3HlqU0b

It really depends on your background. In general you'll need an undergrad and graduate degree. If you want to trade though, often a fancy MBA will take you further than learning math and stats (quant)

You laugh but I get people who actually believe it and then argue about how they know someone doing it. Reddit has large groups of these people.

25 %??? What are u talking about 😅

I'm a big proponent of diversification.

Get as many internships at top tier firms under your belt as possible, they usually don’t take recent grads so you need some form of investment experience

Well said . weeellll said.

I'm not sure where you're getting 10+%. Here's is just one of many links. In the last 30 years it's just under 10%. When you adjust for inflation you're looking at less than 8%. www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-stock-market-return/#sp500-average-return

So, if a solo quant is getting 10% each year they aren’t doing any better than a monkey throwing darts at a list of stocks because you would also have to adjust the solo quant average return for inflation.

It’s pretty hard to be unsure where I got 10%+ from since I said “over the last 100 years.”

It's a possible path but I can't imagine it would be very profitable. The work to profit ratio would be higher than just working for someone as a quant. The only reason I create content is because I enjoy it.

@@DimitriBianco yea makes sense

America

@@DimitriBianco interesting. The room looks so European. Reminds me of my grandmas house in EE..

doesn’t matter just trade 1 mn ticks, also it doesn’t matter because you’re not in competition you just want to ride the price action at the right time and extract your profit

That's really a personal question. Trading solo is hard as you will have gains and losses. In my opinion there are many other options to be my own boss with less financial risk to make similar amounts. For example, running a landscaping business.

Firms have more capital and resources to increase volume. Both of these result in a larger dollar profit than an individual doing it solo. So a 10% return on your personal million dollars is much a much smaller dollar return than your 10% at a firm with 100 million. Also, many firms lose money but keep people on hoping for a better year the next year.

Poo. Masters in financial mathematics is better then self study individual topics you need

I'm guessing you don't look at historical returns. The last few years are abnormally high due to low interest rates and the government pumping money. Not to mention around 50% of hedge funds end up going bankrupt. You end up measuring survival bias.

Jim Simon's Medallion Fund averaged around 66% over 30 years but it only handles limited funds and is closed off to outside investors. If you check the performance of RenTech, it hasn't done that much relative to the market benchmark. I think the reporting of his success might be slightly overrated. People often skim how much survivorship bias plays a role in these things.

I would do Nomura. The name of the company will carry a lot more weight even though you aren't specifically doing quant dev. Nomura experience will open other opportunities and writing your resume can help you transition to quant dev if you have the CS experience/education.

Yeah I got a notice about it from youtube. I wasn't sure which approach to take. I could have it removed by youtube, I could ask them to remove it, or I could leave it and hope they don't copy more videos. As of now I have decided to just leave it since it does promote the content with subtitles. If more videos are copied though I will ask them to remove them. Thank you for the heads up.

None of this was pessimistic, he was actually quite optimistic in all of his assumptions. This video just goes to show that even with an optimistic view, being an independent quant is so hard and unlikely that you misinterpreted it as pessimism. Go figure!