Over the past few years I have been aiming towards becoming a swe when i graduate and I am in my final year now with a grad offer for an SWE role. I am now more curious though to become a quant. It seems quite interesting/thrilling to research algorithms to trade on the stock market. What draws me away from SWE is that the work gets quite dull. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? How easy is the switch? Would I need a PhD?
Good quants can do both mathematics, and program. Mathematics used is typically stochastic calculus as most of the valuation functions require you to model the underlying process (read fx rate, or equity price etc) and then calculating the specific payoff and then discounting. This is used when there aren't any analytic pricing formulas for the instrument in question. You then have to be able to implement this in a fast library that the engineers can deploy in larger valuation and risk systems. Needing a PhD depends on where you work. I would say having a masters is probably a good idea, but many of quants I worked with in developed markets had masters or PhDs.
Stochastic shit is for pricing quants. Not the guys who actually make money
There is a difference between a quantitative analyst, typically called a quant in finance, and an algorithmic trader/trader. My answer referred to the former. If you want to become a trader, go do an MFE program, like the one UC Berkeley offers, I think ranked close to the top in the world. You will probably get a good overview of finance and can then land a job at a hedge fund/asset manager/sell side/quant. Depending on what you trade you may, or may not, need stochastic math.
@Amazon where did you work with quants? Also curious if said quants actually earned a higher hourly rate than senior SWE's
No PhD but you must be a maths and stats genius.
The term "genius" is hardly meaningful, as even the "average" math grad student is a genius in math and stats by SWE standards, which are not that high (intro discrete math, calculus, linear algebra?)
Exactly. Be better in maths than an average CS student. I would say that grad students who have majored in CS with a concentration in ML or Data Science should be good enough. An average CS grad only takes the basic courses maths you have mentioned.