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There are two main kinds of quants working in finance industry, say, stat arb in buy side and prop desks in banks, and option pricing quants in sell side. If you face both career options after you graduate from a financial math PhD, which one would give you a, more promising(salary, progression...) prospect? in 5 yrs?assume interest is neutral, but option pricing is more relevant to background. Any comments are appreciated!

Closer to the money is better, after that choose the thing that you are most better at than other people.

Ah, beautifully summed up!

QuoteOriginally posted by: JONAHThere are two main kinds of quants working in finance industry, say, stat arb in buy side and prop desks in banks, and option pricing quants in sell side. If you face both career options after you graduate from a financial math PhD, which one would give you a, more promising(salary, progression...) prospect? in 5 yrs?assume interest is neutral, but option pricing is more relevant to background. Any comments are appreciated!precisely the question bothering me, derivatives has more rigorous math, and I think stat arb is more of CS..

Quoteprecisely the question bothering me, derivatives has more rigorous math, and I think stat arb is more of CS..I do not understand these remarks .. Why should a question like that bother ?You should think of what you like to achieve and what kind of work you like. Do you want to be a math-guru who works on exotic models ? Or do you like to work on trading strategies and studying market-behaviour (on all kind of scales) ? To me these two jobs are completely different..

QuoteOriginally posted by: eye51Quoteprecisely the question bothering me, derivatives has more rigorous math, and I think stat arb is more of CS..I do not understand these remarks .. Why should a question like that bother ?You should think of what you like to achieve and what kind of work you like. Do you want to be a math-guru who works on exotic models ? Or do you like to work on trading strategies and studying market-behaviour (on all kind of scales) ? To me these two jobs are completely different..That's exactly something that is bothering me too. At school my PhD training is mostly about pricing and calibration of exotic models. However I am also very interested about trading strategies. Data mining and statistical arbitrage has always been fascinating to me. I have also been devising my own trading strategies. I also like fundamentals. I am fond of both macro and micro analysis. Now learning that these two areas are two completely different fields makes me clueless... Esp. once you get into a bank, you won't be able to trade on your own account, that's kind of disappointing...

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCCloser to the money is better, after that choose the thing that you are most better at than other people.This is great advice. I'd even go so far as switching the statements around. Many times have I seen excellent quant developers turn into medicore quants\traders, excellent quants turn into medicore traders\developers, excellent traders turn into medicore managers etc. etc. Top notch ability in virtually any area will often pay more than average\medicore ability in another.

QuoteOriginally posted by: mizhaelQuoteOriginally posted by: eye51Quoteprecisely the question bothering me, derivatives has more rigorous math, and I think stat arb is more of CS..I do not understand these remarks .. Why should a question like that bother ?You should think of what you like to achieve and what kind of work you like. Do you want to be a math-guru who works on exotic models ? Or do you like to work on trading strategies and studying market-behaviour (on all kind of scales) ? To me these two jobs are completely different..That's exactly something that is bothering me too. At school my PhD training is mostly about pricing and calibration of exotic models. However I am also very interested about trading strategies. Data mining and statistical arbitrage has always been fascinating to me. I have also been devising my own trading strategies. I also like fundamentals. I am fond of both macro and micro analysis. Now learning that these two areas are two completely different fields makes me clueless... Esp. once you get into a bank, you won't be able to trade on your own account, that's kind of disappointing...If you're a math guru, you probably won't enjoy stat arb. Stat arb is far more statistics orientated (surprise surprise) than math. If you don't like CS, you also won't enjoy stat arb as pretty much every role within the space involves hands on programming to some degree.BTW, you probably will be allowed to trade on your own account albeit with restrictions.