For those actually in the industry

quag_mire
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:33:38 +0000

Trading and derivatives pricing (structuring) both pay slightly better on average than IBD, and at top levels pay waaaay better than IBD. They also work far fewer hours (no weekends, work market hours +4 or so). IBD sounds horrible to be honest.



If quants earn more money than those in IBD, the downside is that becoming a quant is pretty hard relative to becoming a general financial analyst…most quants have some pretty quantitative major, such as math, statistics, and graduate degrees in financial engineering etc…all those majors are much more difficult than a business major…the upside is that quants are generally less vulnerable to recessions than general analysts, i.e. not as many quants are laid off as are IBD people…so it’s a tradeoff