Quants --Alive and Kicking

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by marketsurfer, Dec 23, 2008.

  1. Are you suggesting that the pure sciences can be used to predict human behavior?
     
    #11     Dec 24, 2008
  2. Corelio

    Corelio

    I could not agree more
    :p
     
    #12     Dec 24, 2008
  3. nitro

    nitro

    I don't remember where I read this, but this sums it up for me perfectly:

    "In the short run, we will learn something. I the intermediate term, we will learn quite a bit. In the long run, we will learn nothing" - ?

    The problem is that trading is mostly ruled by 20somethings, and by the time the generation that went through this is too old to impose the lessons on their peers, the knowledge may as well be stored in the Library of Alexandria.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
     
    #13     Dec 24, 2008
  4. Predicting their collective behavior is more than enough!
     
    #14     Dec 25, 2008
  5. Good luck with that.
     
    #15     Dec 25, 2008
  6. Every pricing model in existence makes specific market assumptions, therefore every pricing model in existence is by definition also a predictive model.
     
    #16     Dec 25, 2008
  7. You would have wished the same to Boyle 300 years ago about gases.
     
    #17     Dec 25, 2008
  8. Isnt investing basically a physcological bet on what some other idiot thinks an asset is going to be worth a few years down the road?
     
    #18     Dec 25, 2008
  9. Nothwithstanding some of the hot air that gets passed around in these here parts, I suspect that the underlying physics and chemistry of gases may not be quite as directly applicable to the markets as some would like to believe. Unlike you, I'm not a man of science, so I can't speak with any authority on the matter. However, I suspect that human behavior is a tad more indeterminate and perhaps better analyzed with far more blunt instruments. But if you have made your fortune in the markets using your knowledge of physics, then who am I to question the emperor's clothing?
     
    #19     Dec 25, 2008
  10. 

these people are really smart. no doom and gloom bo hoo hoo recession there. The surge in quants is more proof nothign hanged economically between June 2007 and now.
     
    #20     Dec 25, 2008