How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite
The "quants"——Wall Street's disciples of quantitative analysis——have become the mar-ket's new superstars. Their mathematical models are now the basis for such financial market innovations as exotic derivatives, structured investment products, quantitative trading strategies, and portfolio selection.What brought about this path-breaking investment revolution? Some cite the beginning of trading in exchange-listed equity options in 1973, while others credit the arrival of desktop computing around 1980. But perhaps the most important factor was the dramatic increase in the volatility of prices. It was this aversion to increasing uncertainty experienced by financial market participants——real, living, breathing people—that led to the quant revolution. So who are these people who develop the mathematical models that create new ways to allow people to modify their exposure to risk? How do they do what they do? Where did they come from? In How I Became a Quant, you will find firsthand accounts direct from the people who were swept into, and then helped fashion, today's "quant-driven," dynamic world of finance.More than two dozen quants tell their stories here and detail the varying paths they have followed——often from university graduate departments of physics, math-ematics, and engineering——to Wall Street. Peter Carr, head of Quantitative Financial Research at Bloomberg, tells of his progression from cornering the local paper delivery market as a boy in Toronto to teaching at Cornell to ultimately helping Bloomberg start up its quant group. Leslie Rahl, President of Capital Market Risk Advisors, describes how she excelled in math and science as a girl, went on to MIT——so as not to be seen as "weird," as she thought might happen at other schools——and joined Citibank at a time when they had only two women VPs in the entire worldwide organization. Andrew Weisman, Managing Director of Merrill Lynch, reveals an academic background that began with study of the classics——Plato to Popper, Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, and oddly enough, swimming lessons.These unlikely superstars of Wall Street now provide the intellectual horsepower to fulfill the dream of unlimited ability to manage risks through trading financial instruments. These are the stories behind their careers.