Serving the Quantitative Finance Community

 
BudFox86
Topic Author
Posts: 3
Joined: November 26th, 2019, 7:58 am

Front-office Quant trying to switch to Research

December 8th, 2019, 3:11 pm

Hi all,

I am a front-office quant who has worked for a decent number of years on the trading desk of a big bulge-bracket bank in LDN, literally sitting beside the traders. During my time working in this environment I had the chance to interact with pretty much all stake-holders, trading, sales, quants, MO, finance, research and mgmt, gaining a pretty good idea of what different teams do in a IB and how they are perceived by the people at the top. At the same time I have grown massively disillusioned by what quants do on the sell-side these days, which is far from what a graduate student think they do, while at the same time I developed an interest for what Research does, and I am contemplating switching to that area. Basically I'd love to join a team where there is much less focus on technology and more on research and analysis; some quants I know already managed to jump boat internally (actually 20% of my quant graduate class are now in Research), and therefore I'm keen to consider doing the same. Unfortunately because of a # or reasons I cannot pursue this move internally, my team will never allow me to leave, therefore I was wondering if there is any headhunter here who has ever placed a quant into a pure research team (or know any headhunter who did it or would be interested in talking to me), so to gain some insight on how to get an interview in the filed and properly prepare for it (I would imagine less focus on coding and more on econometrics/time seris/macroeconomics/ML ?) Or simply any opinion on the matter would be useful, since I noticed outside my bank when I mentioned to ppl that I want to move to Research they all seem very surprised, while internally I have seen many quants taking this step, and all of them after a few years in research keep saying that that was the best decision they made in their life ... which does not surprise me at all. 
 
User avatar
bearish
Posts: 5180
Joined: February 3rd, 2011, 2:19 pm

Re: Front-office Quant trying to switch to Research

December 8th, 2019, 9:14 pm

OK - this will fall into the "simply any opinion on the matter" category. Have you considered moving to a buy side quant role? There, the work will typically be driven a lot less by regulatory considerations, and more by actual quests to quantify risk, locate relative value, optimize portfolios, improve execution, etc. The line between quants and certain parts of fundamental research (e.g., rates, macro, securitized products) is also a bit more blurred and not subject to Mifid II considerations, which seem to take a toll on sell side research. 
 
BudFox86
Topic Author
Posts: 3
Joined: November 26th, 2019, 7:58 am

Re: Front-office Quant trying to switch to Research

December 9th, 2019, 8:24 pm

I thought about the buy side in the past, but in general the following two reasons prevent me from pursuing that path (1) jobs there are very often quite technology driven, a lot of coding/debugging expected and (2) my understanding is that accumulating years of sell side experience has little to no value to them, and therefore the easiest way to get a job in that space is to apply for a quant-dev role, which brings me back to point (1) .... 
 
User avatar
Alan
Posts: 2957
Joined: December 19th, 2001, 4:01 am
Location: California
Contact:

Re: Front-office Quant trying to switch to Research

December 10th, 2019, 3:24 am

My advice is to aggressively network. Find out who is doing what you want to do; are they speaking at conferences? Attend and introduce yourself. Ask them how they recruit. Ask them what they look for in qualified candidates.  Hoping some headhunter will do this basic legwork for you may not advance your cause.

 The main thing about money, Bud, -- it makes you do things you don't want to do.  :D
 
BudFox86
Topic Author
Posts: 3
Joined: November 26th, 2019, 7:58 am

Re: Front-office Quant trying to switch to Research

December 14th, 2019, 4:09 pm

I agree with that, even tho I wonder how many times we get a job out of attending a conference versus talking to headhunters .... (in my current job I haven't spent more than 30 minutes away from my LDN desk in a single day in the last 6 years, this to mention how many "conferences" I was able to attend) the former is surely useful, the latter is definitely the practical way, and surely does not impair. I was also hoping to find some quants here who might have taken this step in the past to share some suggestions/advise.