- Growth in Structured Securities
- Growing Emphasis on Low Volatility and Dividends
- Criticisms of Structured Securities
- Demand for Quantitative Skills
- Direction of Quantitative Finance
- When I Realized It Might Be Easier
- Try Again
- The Spreadsheet
- Visualizing the Result
- What It Means and Why It Works: A Nontechnical Overview
- It Doesn't Get Too Complicated
- An Integrated View of Risk Management
Demand for Quantitative Skills
On the hiring front, recruiters are saying that stock pickers are “out” and quantitative analysts are “in.” The role of quants at hedge funds for complex trading has been steady, but it seems the demand for quant talent for more mainstream investing applications is increasing. Firms are changing their emphasis on risk, giving it more weight in the balance between risk and return. Instead of selecting return targets and then minimizing the risk involved in achieving them, the new design order is to determine acceptable levels of risk first and then go for returns. Here is an excerpt from a recent job posting at T. Rowe Price:
- The T. Rowe Price investment approach strives to achieve superior performance but is always mindful of the risks incurred relative to the potential rewards.
The job posting explains the “greatly expanded” capabilities in Quantitative Research, including portfolio analytics and modeling and the outlook for continued growth.
- These are key areas of focus for the firm where we anticipate a strong growth in demand.6
The job requirements for this T. Rowe Price job listing include a Ph.D.; a CFA; a Master’s degree in quantitative finance, science, engineering, or mathematics; and proficiency with analytic modeling platforms such as MatLab, R, or S-plus.