Would like to get some thoughts regarding how a Ph.D. in OR (top 5 school) would be received by a bank for front office structuring or trading job, or by a fund for a trading job, versus some of the other more common educational backgrounds seen. Lots of physicists and mathematicians in quant deriv pricing roles, no surprises. Lots of backgrounds for quant and algo traders, such as signal processing, pure CS, statistics with good programming, etc. But I don't have the whole spectrum in view, not having worked at a bank.I wanted to get some thoughts on specifically the advantages, disadvantages, and perceptions of a pure OR background in this field and for these roles compared to other areas of specialty in common candidates (and in successful placements). Assume quality and reputation of school is not an issue.Thanks, and regards.

Do you have an offer?

You may find this Paper enlightening.

QuoteOriginally posted by: StylzWould like to get some thoughts regarding how a Ph.D. in OR (top 5 school) would be received by a bank for front office structuring or trading job, or by a fund for a trading job, versus some of the other more common educational backgrounds seen. Lots of physicists and mathematicians in quant deriv pricing roles, no surprises. Lots of backgrounds for quant and algo traders, such as signal processing, pure CS, statistics with good programming, etc. But I don't have the whole spectrum in view, not having worked at a bank.I wanted to get some thoughts on specifically the advantages, disadvantages, and perceptions of a pure OR background in this field and for these roles compared to other areas of specialty in common candidates (and in successful placements). Assume quality and reputation of school is not an issue.Thanks, and regards.===========================For the jobs you mention I'm not sure any of those specializations have any advantage. Getting into trading depends on a lot of other skills and temperment. You may get there by being hired as a trading assistant and working into trading as the traders find you have the skills and like you.However an OR degree is probably one of the best science for getting into a quant group or research area since the exposure to many areas related or semi-related to quant work is wider. Look at the number of people from Stanford, Princeton, NU-IEMS who are in finance/quant work or teach in finance or other quant related programs. Stanford OR has always been very associated with the finance program; Princeton does not have a business school so the OR has become very much involved with the quant finance field.

We used operational research methods (quadratic optimisation in particular) to minimise the tracking error experienced on hedge trades. However, it wasn't a main focus and certainly there's little/no more work being done on it now. Loss minimisation << money generation.