Quants: Good or Bad?

Writing for The Telegraph, Sarfraz Manzoor describes the computers that run Wall Street and the "math geniuses"—quantitative analysts, or "quants"—who program and monitor the computers.

Many top hedge funds, he reports, recruit from the ranks of math and physics Ph.D.s, preferring such academics to those who studied finance or got their start on the Gordon Gekko trading floor of old.

Working on Wall Street does necessitate some adjustment, however. Says hedge fund manager Patrick Boyle,

Some of the guys who come from pure science and maths backgrounds are used to solving a problem and it works. They think they can find a formula that will perfectly describe how the market moves. That is the philosopher’s stone—it is utterly impossible.

Read the article.