<t>A lot of this depends on the state.In California, non-compete clauses are unenforceable. If it were not for this, there would be no Silicon Valley (Fairchild Semiconductor begat National Semiconductor, Intel, etc...) Other states have different laws. Another question is what the compensation is f...

<t>My impression is that prop trading at any bank that took US government money during the financial crisis (Goldman, JP Morgan, BA/Merril Lynch etc..) is now banned from prop trading. JP Morgan got into trouble as they tried to hide this in the London office (e.g., the London Whale trade). Prop tra...

<t>For what it's worth, non-compete agreements are unenforceable under California law. This is one reason that technology companies have thrived in California. In the beginning there was Fairchild Semiconductor, which begat National Semiconductor which begat Intel and Advanced Microdevices and...I h...

Very nice! I particularly like the inclusion of the IB interface.

Great article.Right now it's an employers market. Perhaps someday this will change and interviewers will actually look for skills and experience.

<t>QuoteOriginally posted by: operationsresI don't see how the "For example, ..." lends support to the first sentence that you were trying to provide an example of? Markowitz mean-variance theory is not thought of as a serious practical approach in academia. They teach it to undergrads because it's ...

<r>You might ask Edward O. Thorp (<URL url="http://edwardothorp.com/index.html">http://edwardothorp.com/index.html</URL>). Dr. Thorp is one of the great quantitative traders of all time, along with being a brilliant quant. He also used to be a professor (at UC Irvine). So he might be willing to sugg...

<t>QuoteI have also installed R/Rmetrics package and studied a book associated with it. In leading edge industry, for third party optimization engines (e.g. MSCI/Barra, Axioma) or open source tools (e.g. R), which one is more popular or acceptable by most finance institutions (e.g. fund, investment ...

<t>I've taken a graduate level class in quantitative portfolio management. I've also collected a number of books on the topic and read a number of papers.As far as I can tell, what you learn in academia seriously lags leading edge industry practice. For example, in an academic class on portfolio the...

<t>QuoteJust a quick question: how wide is the compensation gap between a trader and a quant ? I suspect it to be pretty big right ? Because at the MFE of my school, the best tercile ends up as traders and not quants.My perception is that trading, especially on the sell side, requires some different...

I'm already a software engineer/computer scientist. I'm in the UW Master's program as well (as a part time student).

<t>Thanks for all of the great thoughtful posts. I have found the discussion very interesting and informative. I'm really glad I asked the question.I don't have an answer to the salary question, which is why I asked. I do think that there will always be a need for computational finance people.I've b...

<t>I would be curious to learn what people on the forum think about the prospects for recovery in the computational/quantitative finance job market. I don't know how accurate my impression is. I'm be curious to learn what others think and whether I'm off base.Right now the job market for software en...