Traders Are Finally Getting Recognized

Trading is finally getting recognized thanks to "quants". While quants are not traders using traditional TA - but then probably not a lot of us do - they are definitely traders.

Btw, this article even documents how many of the best and brightest are skipping their MBA's to become traders, quants and server a variety of other functions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/b...&ei=5087&em&en=640d9f32487a7ba5&ex=1190174400

Like other young people on the fast track, Mr. Hammond has run the numbers and figures that an M.B.A. is a waste of money and time — time that could be spent making money. “There’s no way that I would consider it,” he says.

As more Americans have become abundantly wealthy, young people are recalculating old assumptions about success. The flood of money into private equity and hedge funds over the last decade has made billionaires out of people like Kenneth Griffin, 38, chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group, and Eddie Lampert, 45, the hedge fund king who bought Sears and Kmart. These men are icons for the fast buck set — particularly the mathematically gifted cohort of rising stars known as “quants.” Many college graduates who are bright enough to be top computer scientists or medical researchers are becoming traders instead, and they measure their status in dollars instead of titles.

Many of the brightest don’t covet a corner office at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Instead, they’re happy to work at a little-known hedge fund run out of a two-room office in Greenwich, Conn., as long as they get a fat payday. The competition from alternative investment firms — private equity and hedge funds in particular — is driving up salaries of entry-level analysts at much larger banks. And top performers at the banks make so much money today that they don’t want to take two years off for business school, even if it’s a prestigious institution like the Wharton School or Harvard.

The new ranks of traders and high-octane number crunchers on Wall Street are also a breed apart from celebrated long-term investors like Warren E. Buffett and investment banking gurus like Felix G. Rohatyn. What sets the new crowd apart is the need for speed and a thirst for instant riches.

“With the growth of hedge funds, you’re getting a lot of really smart people who are getting paid a lot very young,” says Arjuna Rajasingham, 29, an analyst and a trader at a hedge fund in London. “I know it’s a bit of a short-term view, but it’s hard to walk away from something that’s going really well.”

 

Here's another link from today that decries the fact that " on any given day, 50% to 70% of stock trading is probably done using a quant strategy of some form." This guy hates quants (and traditional traders) as well as he considers them noise and doesn't realize they're supplying the liquidity he needs for his long term trades. But, nevertheless, he's recognizing them:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.co...Chronicles/MarketHackersRunningOutOfAmmo.aspx

 

Sorry for the dumb question...what is a "Quant"?

 

This really is the wrong site to ask this sort of question - as for many here the word "Quant" is considered to simply be a misspelling

 

I smell a bubble.

 

indeed....

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst

 

Agreed.

 

the fact that 60% of volume is by aritificial intelligence it means 60% of volume is speculation or bullshit.

 

these computer automation just replaced what people used to do manually...

nothing has changed just it's now automated.