18 · Ten Hats

A quant is technically ten jobs all merged into one. Mathematician, physics professor, financial economics professor, financial data scientist and data analyst, short-term day and swing trader, joint research scientist in psychology and philosophy, corporate finance project manager, systems architect specialising in scientific computing and mathematical modelling, AND a software engineer. That is why they get paid the sum of all the salaries each of those people earn in a year — and over time, that sum times ten, a hundred, a thousand.

So to sum up: quants get paid a ton, have high status, and enjoy really interesting work. It was luck for me to find what I loved, but it came from fucking around, chasing everything, and eliminating what I don't want. It's intellectually stimulating, it makes a lot of money, and there's status attached. You get the most important thing — doing what you love and loving what you do — while the other stuff that matters comes along too. It's a scientist's job, which was my original dream, and you get paid to think, read and write code. A lot. A scientist just sits there, does research — it's all reinvestment of time and work into yourself, and you get paid. Same with fellowships for postgraduates and postdocs, which I think is crazy.

I genuinely want to be a quant. You can just snap your fingers and be it now! Allow yourself internships, trainee positions and spring weeks at SME quant firms, or even the larger ones. I want to get into quant — I just don't know what grabs me most among quant researcher, quant developer and quant trader. During my time in the UK I want to explore all three with internships.

The shit that goes into being a quant is just unfathomable. You think all this comes easily? No — it comes from a decade of apprenticeship. When you work sixteen hours a day, seven days a week for a decade, that's 60,000 hours. With that level of dedication, love and passion, nothing can stop you from being one of the best traders alive by thirty.

Quant trading provides the bid and the ask. Quant research analyses stocks and corporate news, trying to predict the market. Quant software engineering — the quant developers — build the algorithms and the infrastructure for traders to perform market research. Market makers make the economy fairer by placing a bid and an ask; hedge funds take outside money and invest it for returns — fundamental analysts, PE ratios, looking at investments. Prop shops use their own money rather than a pool of clients' money to buy and sell stocks, bonds, derivatives; mutual funds and ETFs manage pooled money from retail investors. Discretionary investing is a professional management style where a portfolio manager has authority to make investment decisions — buying, selling, allocation — without seeking client approval for each transaction, built on mutual trust and a pre-agreed mandate, often used by high-net-worth individuals. Investors give full control to a manager, saving time and removing emotional decision-making — trust manifested via the fee on the returns.

HFT and scalping fit my proclivity more than swing and position trading, because of the speed and the pressure tolerance I have, both cognitive and spiritual. Even my workouts are HIIT — kickboxing, basketball. Every set is full life-and-death mode; so is the rest. A very high-risk oscillation mode.

Remember: you are going to start your hedge fund right after you finish your DPhil, so you'll need PhD-researcher level across the octagonal subjects of a quant hedge fund manager. That means ten times the workload of everybody else in your cohort, on top of perfect execution on scores.