<p>I’ve been lurking on the Business boards recently and was wondering if someone could answer some questions I had about quantitative finance.</p>
<p>In quant firms, like DE Shaw and Ren. Technologies, what is the difference between the programmers and quantitative analyst? Or are they one in the same?
Here’s a job description of a programmer at Ren. Technologies:
<a href=“http://www.rentec.com/programming.pdf[/url]”>http://www.rentec.com/programming.pdf</a></p>
<p>Isn’t this basically a quantitative trading job?</p>
<p>Also, how much programming is needed to land a quant job? </p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Ok. First off, quants are not employed in the same capacity everywhere. Quants simple means people involved in finance who happen to use quantitative methods and tools to solve a problems. There are quants involved in trading system/prediction development. Their job would be to research new algorithms to systematically make trading decisions in the market. You also have quants involved heavily in pricing. These guys are in various trading desks assisting traders price various products and research new methods of hedging them. Quants are also involved in risk management and might be measuring various credit risks that might effect the banks operations. </p>
<p>On the other hand, programmers involved in trading operations are focused on operations. Their goal is not to research new methods of pricing or prediction systems, but to optimize and make production ready systems. They will work on developing databases, manage the firms trading infrastructure, streamline code and make it efficient before its let loose. </p>
<p>All quants need to know how to program. However, the importance of programming depends on the product traded. A quant involved in products that are illiquid is more interested in researching pricing and hedging techniques. On the other hand, a quant involved in high frequency trading has to think about extracting that couple of seconds (milliseconds nowadays) of efficiency. Thus, understanding the intricacies of various programming techniques is important. It should be noted that even then, the production ready algos are coded by expert programmers. </p>
<p>RenTech is involved in high frequency finance which is very computation intensive. Its no easy task to manage databases which have to efficiently capture, clean, massage, and store gigabytes of tick data daily. And thats just one thing programmers do.</p>