I've been working for a bank as a quant, and recently for a couple of reasons I am thinking about a change.
I see that there are three types of "buy side" roles in the market (the term being used in a generous sense): quant hedge fund, prop market making firm, and some of the remaining prop desks within some banks. My question is, how do they compare against each other in terms of
- up side
- down side (chance of going ruin/getting sacked)
- reemployability (is the exposure broad enough?)
- any other comments welcomed
I have nothing useful to contribute on your question, narrowly defined, but you seem to be leaving out most buy side quant jobs. Those would be found in more or less traditional asset managers whose end products are mutual funds, institutional separate accounts, ETFs, and some international equivalents (like UCITS). The focus is not on trading algos (which may be your definition of quant), but rather a quest for alpha or, failing that, at least smart beta, along with all manners of fixed income analytics, equity factor models, and a variety of other research/modeling work of a risk management flavor. Think Blackrock, Pimco, AQR, etc.