<t>Only 20% no shows? My room was only half full -- did anybody else experience a low turnout when taking the exam this year? And does anybody on the buy side care about CFA, or do only people on the sell side care? I even have some sell side friends that use the CFA to help them get into business s...

<t>I don't think that CFA is very helpful for a quant. The exam is tailored to financial analysts, so not exactly a quant focus. Also, it is increasingly being used by developers and such to try and break into finance, so the value may even be diminishing as the number of test takers and charterhold...

<t>The general concensus among my friends that have taken L2 is that it's a lot more difficult and requires more conceptual understanding, as opposed to the pure memorization that is typically sufficient to pass L1. I have heard of CAIA, but I don't know anybody who's taken it yet. It seems like it'...

<t>Thanks for the info, but I'm more interested in programs that firms have in place. While general programs are a good way to try and market yourself, I figure that firms have much more specific systems in place that address specific skills of knowledge that they're interested in and I'm a lot more...

Anyone know if any funds have training programs in place? I've heard of a few places that offer some training, but it would be interesting to hear how common these programs are and what kind of things they cover.

I passed, but I know about 6 people who didn't. Most of them didn't put in the required time and neither did I, but I guess that I just got lucky. Anyone planning to take L2 in June?

<t>I just passed Level I and I've found that people who study the suggested 250 hours generally pass.There are many theories for the declining pass rates, but people generally refer to:1) The increasing number of test takers, which means that more people without industry knowledge are taking the exa...

<r>Back to the topic of quant funds in New York... There aren't too many with true quant strategies, but I think these are some of the larger ones that are truly quant-driven.Renaissance Technologies (formerly <URL url="http://www.rentec.com">www.rentec.com</URL>, now removed) - run by Jim SimonsD.E...

<t>This is a little bit late, but...... The people who mentioned Simons are right on the money. He's worth a few billion and is about as quantitative as you can get. His RenTech fund is arguably the most successful hedge fund in history, although admittedly not the largest, and a large portion of hi...

<t>It's tough to say which institutions have the best quants, but I would guess that the best groups of quants and/or the best quant systems would be at the funds that focus on systematic trading. They have the money to afford the best quants and tend to have the best systems in place to facilitate ...

<t>Everyone that I've spoken with says that the test is much harder than you would expect. 20 hours/week for a couple of months appears to be about normal for people who passed and I don't know anybody that passed the exam easily -- they all just squeaked by.The major things that people point to whe...

<t>I looked up the Berkeley Options Data Base and saw that they no longer offer access to the historical intra-day options data for the CBOE. Does anybody know if there's another good source for historical options tick data? I've been looking for while now, but haven't been able to come up with anyt...