May 1st, 2006, 11:18 pm
Hi, I m physics back ground, recently landed a quant job. I read some of the books you listed and hope can help by relating to my interview experiences.like Janitor said, given you are a phd in finance, and did williams, oksendal and steele, I believe you don't have any problem with stoch calc. and its application in arb-free pricing. maybe read wilmott's book on the PDE side of the story, maybe then the finite difference. but I did not get any FDM questions since its not on my resume. Craig feels very theoretical, make sure you know the procedures of MLE,OLS,MM, people do ask what are the steps and sometimes you need to solve a concrete example. know what is principle component.don't know how strong is your C++ cos "thinking in C++" as I heard is an entry level book. do go through "effective C++" if you know the basics, maybe a bit of design pattern or templates/STL. try engage DCFC more for C++ insights but prepare to be dazzled.the only measure theory question I was asked is what is the difference between Riemann and Lebesgue integral so Rudin/Billingsley/Chung could be too much. I only read billingsley and did not feel its very relevant to landing a quant job. I get measure theory question because again my resume says I took a class on it ( I did, only forgot all about it, the class used the other Rudin's).people asked about copula, I just said don't know. they passed, they didn't expect me to know as a fresh grad but could be useful on job.Monte Carlo is on my resume, so I got a lot questions on that. including variance reduction. so chapter 4 of Paul Glasserman may help you to brush up.I told people I knew very little about credit derivative/risk. they had no problem with that.a few items to add to your list: HULL; Heard on the street; the brainteaser forum here;all the good luck. heard job market is good.