Quantative Jobs (Quant Jobs)
Please note that we are not authorised to provide any investment advice. The content on this page is for information purposes only.
Most organizations appoint quantitative finance professionals (quants) for specific positions. However, their activities may overlap. Financial institutions roll out quantitative jobs to employ quants to increase their revenues by trading their own capital. Quants are also required to support traders, form new financial products, maintain portfolios and risk measurement.[br]
Quantative Jobs: Career Options
Here are some career options in quantitative finance:
Alternative Investments and Proprietary Trading: Trading activities performed for the direct benefit of the firm are called proprietary trading in alternative investments. Quants use various strategies of alternative investment, such as fixed income arbitrage, convertible arbitrage, merger arbitrage, managed futures, private equity, distressed debt and global macro.
Trading Support: Quants play a significant role in precisely pricing complicated transactions and instruments in a very short span of time. This also involves risk management while adhering to the firm’s objectives. Quants make the use of in-house proprietary implementations and commercial systems to facilitate the decision making process.
Consulting and Customer Support: Some financial institutions, such as investment banks hire quants to provide their customers analytical research reports. Customers can be given these reports without any charges, depending upon the company policy. Quants also maintain financial assets portfolio in the form of endowments, sinking funds and pension funds.
Product Development: Quants perform the pricing of products, such as collateralized obligations, hybrid securities and exotic options, which is a complex task. The purpose is to increase returns or cover risks against liquidity, fiscal or legal.
Risk Control: Financial markets are quite complex and so are financial products. The failure of high profile investment banks and hedge funds in the 2008 recession boosted the demand for a highly quantitative and consistent approach to controlling and monitoring risk. Modern financial institutions employ quantitative finance experts to develop, implement and maintain risk management policies. Risk control entails thorough knowledge of various financial instruments.
Portfolio Management: Students who choose portfolio management as their career are responsible for identifying the company’s financial objectives. They also create an assets portfolio using these objectives. Managing this portfolio at the time of uncertain investment performance is a complex activity. Quants make statistical estimates of investment parameters and requirements and encapsulate them in a mathematical framework. You may be appointed as portfolio manager or can choose to work as an outside consultant.[br]
Academic and Industrial Research: For players in the finance industry to operate freely, there are some practical problems that need to be solved. Approaches to serve this purpose involve limitations of theory, and availability of data and computational resources. Modern theories do not accommodate many intricacies of real markets. These limitations become opportunities for academicians and industrial researchers.
