Quants

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If you are a quant, you are a mathematician with an advanced degree in mathematics or physics. Your work is based on both academic research and professional, peer-reviewed publications. You take your inputs from them, apply your own formidable intelligence to come up with a stochastic pricing model that you think will work exceptionally well for a class of products. You will also need the details of the products. Your output is, of course, a pricing model of your own, or an implementation of a pricing model from the literature. This is your primary work unit.

Quant perspective

In order to make use of this pricing model, it will have to be validated. Then a set of products using the pricing model will be defined and submitted for approval. Once approved, with the help of trade inputs and market data, each of the products can be priced and booked into the trading platform. But such activities are outside the sphere of interest and influence of the quant. To them, how a product is instantiated into a trade is pretty irrelevant and trivial. It is merely a question of specifying the trade and market inputs to the pricing model. Even how various products are derived is mechanical, and all the “real” work is done in the pricing model.

This perspective, though accurate and functional for a quant, is pretty far removed from the view of the rest of the bank, which is why quants sometimes have the dubious reputation of being out of touch with the industry. The point is not so much that they have to change their perspective, but they should appreciate that there are other equally valid perspectives held by other business units they interact with, and make an effort to know them.

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