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Chukchi
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 15th, 2007, 12:17 am

How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's EliteEdited by Barry Schachter and Richard R. Lindsey Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Wiley (July 9, 2007) ISBN: 0470050624 FinMath.com
Last edited by Chukchi on October 23rd, 2009, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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player
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 15th, 2007, 12:43 pm

the words ..jumping on to a bandwagon come to mind
 
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WilmottBookshop
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 15th, 2007, 1:40 pm

How I Became a Quant: Insights from 30 of Wall Street's Elite is also available from the Wilmott Bookshop at a competitive price.
 
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Jim
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 15th, 2007, 3:27 pm

WilmottBookshop obviously has a better deal -- they give you 30 quants while Amazon only gives you 25!!!
 
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WilmottBookshop
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 15th, 2007, 3:43 pm

Oops! Maybe we exaggerate a little bit I have corrected the error and have banished the 5 extra Quants. Thank you for pointing that out! The Bookshop.
 
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WilmottBookshop
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 15th, 2007, 3:44 pm

How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite is also available from the Wilmott Bookshop..!
 
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Aaron
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 16th, 2007, 9:41 pm

This seems likely to go head to head with Espen Haug's Derivatives Models on Models. Espen delivers only 16 quants, but you can add one for himself and another for Paul Wilmott, because his topic is Paul Wilmott so he should count double. Still, 18 quants for a list price of $80 seems expensive compared to 25 for a list price of $29.95, until you consider that I'm in Espen's book but not Schachter and Lindsey's. Also, Espen's book contains technical material along with the interviews, which might hurt or help, depending on your tastes. It's odd that both books are published by Wiley and come out 11 days apart.I'm still puzzling over this statement from How I Became a Quant:QuoteThese unlikely superstars of Wall Street now provide the intellectual horsepower to fulfill the dream of unlimited ability to manage risks.I know horses, and one "intellectual horsepower" is not impressive compared with, say, the average dog. And although quants can make a lot of money, "superstar of Wall Street" is a stretch. I would rather be a highly-paid Wall Street quant than BSD dealmaker or master of political infighting CEO, but I acknowledge those latter people are the stars of the show.And who dreams of "unlimited ability to manage risks"? I think that means the ability to choose any amount of risk from zero to infinity. Zero is easy, kill yourself. Infinity is a bit harder, convince yourself to accept a religion that preaches Heaven and Hell, then kill yourself. Either way, it's not much to dream about. "Unlimited ability" is a dream, but managing risk is something they have to pay you to do.
 
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SydneyQuant
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 17th, 2007, 1:50 am

Are there book reviews anywhere? Seems to be a cracker of a read, but a few opinions wouldn't hurt.The "Quants as superstars" bit threw me off. Most quants are regarded as geeky, so I wonder where this came from. Or perhaps it's just personality projection :-)Links anyone?
 
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Aaron
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 17th, 2007, 8:16 pm

No reviews yet, as far as I know. I've read some chapters of Espen's book.
 
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Collector
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 18th, 2007, 3:46 pm

"and come out 11 days apart."no, my book is out now, I got it today, looks great, feels great, but smell new book, I prefer smell of old books well it is out in Europe, not sure why US is behind, they ship it with container I would think, that takes a monthAaron as one of the Interviewees you should get a copy soon, or actually they told me they would send out to Interviewees after may 25th... I am not sure exactly how these things works.25 quants versus 16 quants, quality versus quantity even quants should be able to figure out that my book is only 1/3 interviews, 1/3 "technical" chapters and 1/3 quant entertainment....not in form of pages but in form of how I would divide the bookBut I am sure any quant will need both books, anyone that is even half a quant should be able to figure out buying quant books is the best to get people (the authors etc. to work for $5 an hour).. I look forward to read the 25 quants book About 1 dollar per quant, that is about as cheap as they get This is not the end of books about quants, but the beggining: here are potential book ideas:"Quants for Dummies" I see several derivatives "dummies" books published: "Futures & Options For Dummies". "Stock Options for Dummies"....."How to get a life, How 16? 25? quants got out of the Quant Business"The best with finishing writing a book is that you can start writing a new book, I have started on my 3rd book, it is not about Quants, it is not about Finance, at least not directly! I hope to finish it by 2009....I took half a day break! Writing books is adictive.
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Cuchulainn
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 18th, 2007, 3:54 pm

Collector, PlayerYou guys want to bet again?
 
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jfuqua
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 18th, 2007, 4:56 pm

Those profiled. Not many I would have expected. Peter Carr, Bruno Dupire, Bjorn Flesaker, and Peter Jäckel are ones I'd think of in the typical 'Quant' category. Some others are recognized names of people who use quantitative strategies in their funds or investments, I assume to give a broader view of research.While there are alot of names that could be mentioned, a few [industry quants] that might have been included would be Lipton, Piterbarg, Andreasen, Andersen, Rebonato, Babbs, Joshi, Gatheral, Cheyette, Brigo, Musiela, etc. [no slight to ones left off]. Chapter 1: David Leinweber, Leinweber & Co. Chapter 2: Ronald N. Kahn, Global Head of Advanced Equity Strategies, Barclays Global Investors. Chapter 3: Gregg E. Berman, Vice Chairman, RiskMetrics Group. Chapter 4: Evan Schulman, Chairman, Upstream Technologies, LLC. Chapter 5: Leslie Rahl, President, Capital Market Risk Advisors. Chapter 6: Thomas C. Wilson, Chief Insurance Risk Officer, ING Group. Chapter 7: Neil Chriss, Managing Director of Quantitative Strategies, SAC Capital Management, LLC. Chapter 8: Peter Carr, Head of Quantitative Financial research, Bloomberg. Chapter 9: Mark Anson, CEO, Hermes Pensions Management Ltd.; CEO, British Telecommunications Pension Scheme Chapter 10: Bjorn Flesaker, Senior Quant, Bloomberg L.P. Chapter 11: Peter Jäckel. Chapter 12: Andrew Davidson, President, Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc. Chapter 13: Andrew B. Weisman, Managing Director, Merrill Lynch. Chapter 14: Clifford S. Asness, Managing and Founding Principal, AQR Capital Management, LLC. Chapter 15: Stephen Kealhofer, Managing Partner, Diversified Credit Investments. Chapter 16: Julian Shaw, Head Risk Management & Quantitative Research, Permal Group. Chapter 17: Steve Allen, Deputy Director, Masters Program in Mathematics in Finance, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. Chapter 18: Mark Kritzman, President and CEO, Windham Capital Management, LLC. Chapter 19: Bruce I. Jacobs and Kenneth N. Levy, Principals, Jacobs Levy Equity Management. Chapter 20: Tanya Styblo Beder, Chairman, SBCC. Chapter 21: Allan Malz, Head of Risk Management, Clinton Group. Chapter 22: Peter Muller, Senior Advisor, Morgan Stanley. Chapter 23: Andrew J. Sterge, President, AJ Sterge (a division of Magnetar Financial, LLC). Chapter 24: John F. (Jack) Marshall, Ph.D., Senior Principal of Marshall, Tucker & Associates, LLC and Vice Chairman of the International Securities Exchange.
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Collector
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 19th, 2007, 10:02 am

It is somewhat funny how I some years back (5?) got a paper back from referee that told I had to remove the word Quant, because it was not in English vocabulary Quant and Quants are here to stay!
Last edited by Collector on May 18th, 2007, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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jfuqua
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 19th, 2007, 4:07 pm

For another idea of where analytics can come in, see the thread "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning"
 
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Aaron
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New Edition - How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite

May 20th, 2007, 1:35 pm

The list is interesting. I think marketable quants are people with quantitative PhDs who might have been expected to earn a few million dollars over their lifetimes if you predicted at age 25; but who instead made 100 times that over the next ten years through quantitative work. Pete Muller, Cliff Arness, Andrew Davidson, Neil Chriss; those guys (I haven't actually seen any of their tax returns, but Pete was the highest paid guy at Morgan Stanley for several years, above the CEO, Cliff and Andy founded and run companies whose values can be guessed, and at least 75% of them play a lot of poker).Some of the rest are quant's quants, like Peter Carr and Peter Jackel, but some others are relatively unknown: not famous for their publications or positions or riches. Perhaps the book is trying to show the range of quants on Wall Street, not just the big names. That could be interesting to someone considering a financial quant career, and it's a more balanced presentation than focusing only on rich guys and self-promoters, but it's hard to see how it will find a wide audience. Espen's book seems to have more obvious popular appeal, but at $80 to $30 it's not going to find many buyers paying with their own money.