Finance & Banking
Slides from Finance Careers Presentations
Samer Haj-Yehia, PhD (IAP 2008)
Michael Biafore, PhD (IAP 2001)
Online Resources
MIT Science and Engineering Business Club (SEBC)
http://web.mit.edu/sebc/
Careers In Finance
http://www.careers-in-finance.com/
Hedge Fund - Wikipedia Definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_funds
KAUFFMAN FELLOWSHIPS - The Kauffman Fellowship is an educational program designed to educate and train emerging leaders in venture capital and high-growth companies. The Fellowship is dedicated to enhancing the human investment in the venture capital process globally. Fellowship applicants must have a graduate degree (preferably in business, science or technology) and five years full-time professional experience.
Finance for Physicists
http://guava.physics.uiuc.edu/~nigel/finance.html
Leaving Physics for Finance - Jennifer Hodgdon's experience
http://www.poplarware.com/personal/lvphys.html
Martingale International Search
http://www.martingaleinternational.com/index2.html
An executive search firm specialized in the recruitment of people with strong mathematical,
financial, quantitative and programming skills. Their practice is international (including NYC)
and covers all major business areas including Finance, Financial Engineering, Software
Engineering, Quantitative Modeling, Econometrics, Algorithmic Trading and Risk Management.
Martingale International Search Inc.
Dinka Krstulovich
140 East 46th Street
New York, NY 10017
Tel: 212-972-6950
e-mail: dinka@martingaleinternational.com
An MIT doctoral student has offered the following feedback about this firm: "One of the few recruiters who holds an advanced degree in statistics. Specializes in working with new graduates (most recruiters only deal with experienced hires).Gives coaching and tutoring for interviews. I got very very good practice and the problems she presented not only gave me better understanding of the subjects but appeared in real interviews as well. She was willing to invest time and wait for me to study."
Art Rones
Hudson Placement Group, Inc.
(914)478-7111
A recruiter who handles positions in NYC (Wall St.) as well as a firm in CA. This recruiter works with PhDs.
QuantFinanceJobs.com
www.quantfinancejobs.com (We are including this link because it may be of interest to students considering quantitative positions.)
Quantster.com
http://www.quantster.com/index.html (Features ads for positions in quantitative analytics, trading, financial engineering, and risk management, a few requiring a PhD with experience in finance preferred but not required. We are including this link because it may be of interest to students considering quantitative positions.)
Print Resources for Investment Industry
Hedge Me: The Insider's Guide: U.S. Hedge Fund Careers, by Claude Schwab, 2nd. Edition, Lynx Media, Inc., NY, NY, 2004.
List provided by Bob Lenk, PhD Physics, formerly VP, Derivatives, J.P. Morgan, ca. 1995. Updated in Jan. 2001 by Peter Carr, Principal, Banc of America Securities. (*=highly recommended)
VERY BASIC: Investments, by W. Sharpe (Nobel economist). Very clear undergraduate-level text on markets, standard financial models (e.g., CAPM), etc.; good for non-finance people wanting broad introduction to the industry.
*BASIC DERIVATIVES: Options, Futures, and Other Derivative Securities, 4th edition, by John Hull. Deceptively easy introduction to common derivatives; worth reading twice.
*PRICING: Options Pricing, by Dewynne, Howison,Wilmott; Oxford Financial Press. Tough to find--must order from U.K. publisher; very good math/numerical view of pricing theory; often considered a financial "PDE" text. A student version and a broader more recent text are available on Paul Wilmott's home page.
ECONOMETRICS INTRO: Econometrics, by Greene (find it in business school bookstore). Useful as a topical guide to some important ideas and techniques used in finance, including time series methods, cointegration, etc.
MATHEMATICAL FINANCE THEORY: Dynamic Asset Pricing Theory, by Duffie. Very mathematical, but good for those with more formal math training interested in deeper understanding of pricing theory.
PROBABILITY THEORY: Stochastic Differential Equations, by Bernt Oksendal (Springer-Verlag). More intuitive (though still mathematically proper) approach to teach stochastic calculus than the standard Karatzas and Shreve text on the subject.
ENERGY TRADING: Energy and Power Risk Management: New Developments in Modeling, Pricing and Hedging by Alexander Eydeland and Krzysztof Wolyniec. (Recommended by Michael Chechelnitsky (PhD Physical Oceanography, '98), Director, Market Risk, Edison Mission Marketing & Trading.)
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: From an MIT grad Timothy Crack, now a finance professor.
The list can be inexpensively ordered from:
http://www.investmentbankingjobinterviews.com/
Crack, Timothy Falcon: Heard on the street: quantitative questions from Wall Street job
interviews. Bloomington, Ind., T. Crack, 2004. Dewey Library HF5549.5.I6.C72 2004
NOT RECOMMENDED: (Bob Lenk's advice) I don't recommend the big Fabozzi Handbook of Fixed Income Securities that others are keen on - at best, this is an occasionally useful reference for practitioners, but of doubtful use to the newcomer. The only Fabozzi book (he has many) that I like is a text written with Frank Fabozzi, Mortgage and Mortgage-Backed Securities, but this is only recommended for those intending to focus on this sector of the fixed-income market.
The following books were mentioned by the panelists (and moderator, Professor Andrew Lo) for a panel on Finance Careers for PhDs, IAP 2006:
- Shreve, Stochastic Calculus for Finance [ Dewey Library - Stacks | HG106.S57 2004]
- Cox and Rubenstein, Option Markets
- Paul Wilmott, Derivatives : the theory and practice of financial engineering [ Dewey Library - Stacks | HG6024.A3.W553 1998]
- Campbell, Lo and MacKinlay, The Econometrics of Financial Markets [ Dewey Library - Stacks | HG4523.C27 1997]
"Airplane books," (fun, quick reading that provides background on the sociology and culture of finance):
- Emanuel Derman, My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and FInance [ Dewey Library - Stacks | HG4621.D47 2004]
- Michael Lewis, Moneyball [ Dewey Library - Display | GV880.L49 2003 ]
- Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker [ Dewey Library - Display | HG4928.5.L48 1990 ]
- Thomas A. Bass, The Predictors [ Dewey Library - Stacks | HG4621.B37 1999]
- Peter Bernstein, Capital Ideas [ Dewey Library - Reserve Stacks | HG173.B47 1992 ]
- Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed
Recommended Journals/Periodicals
The Economist: excellent, efficient way to stay abreast of international news.
New York Times (business section): for the newcomer, I feel this to be a more approachable source of daily news on US and international business events.
Wall Street Journal: for those with more exposure to the business world, this is clearly the standard US-market business newspaper.
Financial Times (orange paper): better for those with a more global view; this paper is somewhat less parochial (US-centered) than the New York Times or Wall St. Journal.
Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis,: The top 4 academic finance journals which occasionally have good technical "quant" articles.
Mathematical Finance, Finance and Stochastics, Quantitative Finance, Review of Derivatives Research, Journal of Risk, Journal of Derivatives, Journal of Fixed Income, Computational Finance, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance, Applied Mathematical Finance - All of these journals started in the last 10 years and are aimed at the mathematically sophisticated derivatives practitioner.
Risk Magazine (publ. in UK, but $$$; not avail. at Sloan, but may be at Harvard B-school or Northeastern libs): (Bob Lenk's advice) many rave about this magazine, but I feel it's overrated--in my opinion, it contains many nearly-useless articles on events and trends on the international securities industry, together with one or two (per month) useful technical/quant articles. Be selective in reading/skimming this one.
Last updated on Monday, March 03, 08 at 09:21:42 AM EST.
