May 27th, 2004, 6:53 am
QuoteOriginally posted by: KochTrue about the salary. I guess I had in mind premium on salary compared to a quant role in another industry / academia.In my circles, I still have not found a quant that uses his own models to make money on his personal account, so I was wondering if they exist. On the other hand, I guess the more you know/study/research about derivatives the less comfortable you feel about investing your life savings into one of them...I've had much more luck with real estate than trading...not that I am a magnate, but, I have been lucky in the few things I've done on that end. Incidentally, I know a few math professors who have made small fortunes just buying houses. One guy was at Berkeley, the other guy at Santa Cruz. I can't imagine what it costs to buy a shitty little house in the Berkeley Hills or in Santa Cruz these days. They made their money during the California RE boom in the 70s, as did so many others.The appeal of real estate is that it is one market that allows for leverage without margin calls. Secondly, you have to live somewhere, so your first purchase makes sense anyway from a utility perspective. Thirdly, I feel that financial assets are generally converted to real estate assets over time, so, long term it is a good market. One thing is, people involved in it professionaly are on average sleazier and more uncultured than people in capital markets. Read "A Man in Full", or consider the obvious dude in NY. P.S. you related to the Koch brothers of Witchita fame?
Last edited by
Nonius on May 26th, 2004, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.