Serving the Quantitative Finance Community

 
User avatar
farmer
Posts: 61
Joined: December 16th, 2002, 7:09 am

Interview with big Quant hedge funds

May 2nd, 2014, 5:23 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: roundandroundQuoteOriginally posted by: neuroguyNo brand recognitionWhat are the implications of this?You have to drive a Mercedes instead of a Honda, and spend $120 instead of $25, to get a city girl interested.
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Interview with big Quant hedge funds

May 3rd, 2014, 6:45 am

QuoteOriginally posted by: farmerQuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnIt is a kind of lingua franca that all other programming languages (try to) emulate.They try to emulate it in performance, but eradicate it in programmer experience. I think C++ shows someone who is interested in solving programming problems, not just using programs to solve business problems.In most industries, you can make a lot of money solving business problems with crappy programs. In some industries, you need to solve the same problem as everyone else, with the same program, running faster. Or you need to solve a new problem, that cannot be solved in languages that try to solve all known problems before you type the first line of code.Indeed.There are many discussions all over the place on how ugly C++ is, how well-designed and pure Java is etc. etc. They all miss the point as they tend to ignore the 1) the programmer and the 2) kind of problem being addressed. It would seem in many cases that the seeds have been sown in university, when CS dumbing down is all too common.Writing a numerical linear algebra package in Java or C# would be extremely painful (the aesthetics are all wrong) while doing it in C++ gives us a chance of approximating the style in Fortran. // Is there anything uglier than .NET boxing/unboxing or Java Generics.
Last edited by Cuchulainn on May 2nd, 2014, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
User avatar
ArthurDent
Posts: 5
Joined: July 2nd, 2005, 4:38 pm

Interview with big Quant hedge funds

May 3rd, 2014, 10:36 am

QuoteOriginally posted by: farmerThese big trend traders don't have a correlation problem, or a math problem. They have a low-frequency kind of problem. There may be a lot of competition, and they may have taken on a lot of capital, but their main problem is that prices haven't made big moves lately.Right.QuoteSo they are pushing into higher-frequency, order management, better chop filtering to find the smaller trends sooner. What would really help, is some way to say something like Europe is not moving into a new regime, China is. Therefore, moves in the yuan are likely to travel, moves in the euro are not.So how do you quantitatively decide, in an automated way, which trends to overweight like this? One idea, is to go beyond time-series data, into text data. Machine orders go up, machine orders go down. But suddenly there is a new word appearing twice as often as "machine orders."No. You cannot predict the future.When there are no trends, you sit tight. You keep doing your thing, and your account goes sideways.What most people entering finance lack is a willingness to sit tight and do nothing.You cannot do that if you are working for someone, including if you are a one person hedge fund trading clients money...But you can do it if you are trading your own account.
 
User avatar
ArthurDent
Posts: 5
Joined: July 2nd, 2005, 4:38 pm

Interview with big Quant hedge funds

May 3rd, 2014, 10:41 am

oh also,unlike doctors,or construction workers,or consultants,or investment bankers,more work does not mean more money in trading.so sit tight and watch the paint dry. if you need activity, go surfing.
 
User avatar
dweeb
Posts: 11
Joined: July 11th, 2009, 8:10 pm

Interview with big Quant hedge funds

May 3rd, 2014, 3:38 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: ArthurDent No. You cannot predict the future.When there are no trends, you sit tight. You keep doing your thing, and your account goes sideways.What most people entering finance lack is a willingness to sit tight and do nothing.You cannot do that if you are working for someone, including if you are a one person hedge fund trading clients money...But you can do it if you are trading your own account.Or if you're a value investor such as Warren Buffett or Seth Klarman at Baupost.
Last edited by dweeb on May 2nd, 2014, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.