Talking Tuesdays with Fancy Quant

Send us Fan Mail A long form discussion on the history of programming for quants at the banks from SAS to Python and the rise of machine learning. While the hype of machine learning changed some of the banking modeling practices the industry kept their head straight as regulators closely watched. Now in 2026 with the AI hype wave and regulators being less strict, the banks seem lost as many are ca...

Send us Fan Mail Didier Lopes studied control systems and electrical engineering in Europe before moving to the United States to build OpenBB, a next-generation financial research workspace. Frustrated by how fragmented data, analysis, and decision-making tools were across finance and other industries, Didier set out to create a professional-grade platform where teams can bring their data, analyti...

Send us Fan Mail Jeffrey Rosenberg, CFA, Managing Director is a senior portfolio manager within BlackRock Systematic. He leads active and factor investments for mutual funds, institutional portfolios and ETFs within BlackRock’s Systematic Fixed Income (“SFI”) portfolio management team. In this role he serves as a member of the SFI Investment and Executive Committees and as a senior portfolio manag...

Send us Fan Mail Michael Jordan Pilgreen was a poetry and art major but as covid hit and the commercial art industry changed he looked for a new path. He considered financial planning but ended up learning finance and technology to become an engineer on Wall Street in the fixed income market. Now he is a co-founder of Enduring Markets which is a capital markets publication covering a range of inte...

Send us Fan Mail Interested in what quantum computing is? Ramis Movassagh explains the basics of quantum, some applications to finance, why it is a hard problem to solve, and ways to learn more about it. Ramis is an applied mathematician and a theoretical physicist who researches quantum computation and information theory, and quantum cryptography and complexity. He does an amazing job at laying o...

Send us Fan Mail Diving into pure math, quantitative finance, and solving business problems with AI and LLMs. Cheikh Fall is a co-founder of Sabr Research and an MIT grad who is looking to solve many business problems with the advancements in AI. We discuss potential issues with AI, what hedge funds look for in quant researchers, and how to prepare as a student for AI. Cheik Fall https://www.linke...

Send us Fan Mail I had a blast taking to Michael Watson who is the founder and CEO of Hedgineer.  "AI is the future. But not everyone is prepared for it. To effectively integrate AI into a company, it needs an organized, thorough, and secure inventory of data. Without one, every AI implementation remains incomplete because it only has access to a subset of the relevant information it needs. M...

Send us Fan Mail Learn about financial AI expert, Igor Halperin's journey from the Soviet Union to physics and finally quantitative finance in the US. A great discussion on why many physists choose to go into quantitative finance, the positive and negative impacts of LLMs, and some perspectives on careers. Igor Halperin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/igor-halperin-092175a/ YouTube Version: http...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff Ryan is an alpha engineer with an unconventional background. He is also the co-founder of QUANTkiosk and loves solving problems. Some great discussion on programming languages, structuring data, the quant community, and why R programming is so useful. YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/U0qf-sRzQZk QUANTkiosk http://www.quantkiosk.com Jeff Ryan https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffr...

Send us Fan Mail AI has many use cases and is a very broad area. AI has been used in finance since the rise of computers and the internet through automated systems. From trading to originating loans, AI is not new to finance. As LLMs have become the main focus over the last few years, there are a lot of wild predictions and fear of missing out. While LLMs and great at simple tasks and those with l...

Send us Fan Mail Roman Bansal is the founder of NanoConda. We discuss growing up in Russia, the joy of reading books, and how NanoConda can help you set up software, API, hardware, and colocation for HFT (high frequency trading) for smaller firms. We also discuss why Dallas, Texas is growing in the quant space as many firms are locating here. NanoConda https://nanoconda.com/ Roman Bansal https://w...

Send us Fan Mail Tribhuvan Bisen is a co-founder of Quant Insider. We learn about his journey from his education to working at Deutsche and then starting Quant Insider. We also discuss the quant job and education market in India and what it takes to be a quant. Quant Insider: https://quantinsider.io/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/quant-insider/ Tribhuvan Bisen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tribh...

Send us Fan Mail Fred Viole is the founder of OVVO Labs and has been putting together a complete statistical framework using partial moments and nonlinear and nonparametric statistics (NNS). He also has an R package which is free called, NNS. The application of NNS to finance is proprietary and what OVVO Labs uses to sell macroeconomic forecasts, a utility based portfolio optimization tool, and an...

Send us Fan Mail Project Phoenix is me re-organizing my life. I got an offer to be a CRO and instead of taking it, I quit my job, sold my honeybees, and decided to run a half marathon. I started my own business called, "Fancy Quant LLC" where I will consult in quant research, risk management, career development, and academic program consulting and advisory services. For opportunities con...

Send us Fan Mail Raphael Douady is a French mathematician who works in both academia as well as quantitative finance. His specialization is in chaos theory and financial mathematics. In this interview he shares how he got into mathematics and why he left for quantitative finance. We also briefly discuss AI in the finance space as he has a paid seminar on July 31st called, "Opportunities and C...

Send us Fan Mail I sit down with Data Bento's CEO, Christina Qi to discuss how she started Data Bento and why their product of providing data is the best. It turns out there are a lot of features that firms want such as how data is structured, cleaned, and transferred which make a big difference especially in the finance and investing space. Learn more in this episode about Data Bento's...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Season 8 of Talking Tuesdays with Fancy Quant! This season I will bring in more guest speakers from the quantitative finance community to talk about data, business, math, stats, and their journey's through life. Join the quant community in Dallas, Texas April 10th at SMU! Quaint Quant Conference - 2026 Learn and network from a close knit quant community! Support th...

Send us Fan Mail This is the presentation I gave at the Quaint Quant Conference 2025. The goal of the conference is to bring together more people to share ideas and collaborate. I touch on some of the main groups of people in the quantitative finance community and what each group can do to build a better community. The four groups are outsiders, academics, students, and practitioners. Website: htt...

Send us Fan Mail As there has been some discussion around H1Bs and immigration, and a subscriber asked me to talk about it, here is my perspective. A few high points: - Immigration is a key part of America. - Great people should be allowed to immigrate and not just whoever decides they want to come. - The H1B system needs to match the number of people coming as well as a clear and simpler path to...

Send us Fan Mail I brought Patrick Zoro from Lehigh University on the channel to discuss jobs, hiring, program rankings, networking, and just to catch up with him on a personal note. Some interesting takeaways include how programs gather and report graduate income. For example, the data is self reported by the students and then self reported by the universities. Some universities have third partis...

Send us Fan Mail There is a lot of confusion on how admissions is done at quant finance masters programs in the US. Every program will do it differently however today I got the opportunity to learn about the admissions process from one of the top programs (Carnegie Mellon University). Emily Wertz is the director of Admissions and Recruiting at CMU's Masters of Science in Computational Finance...

Send us Fan Mail An interview with valuations expert, David Shimko to discuss what he has been up to. He's teaching a quantitative focused financial valuations core course at NYU Tandon and he has been working on a new company called, Wall Street Scholars. Wall Street Scholars is a consulting, research and publishing organization, whose scholars are renowned for their expertise in applied fin...

Send us Fan Mail I had another great conversation with Agus Sudjianto around machine learning models, LLMs, risk management, model validation, and building culture. Agus recently retired from Wells Fargo and is now enjoying a variety of side projects including working at H2O.ai, teaching model validation at UNC, and I believe a few other projects which may come to light within the next year. Websi...

Send us Fan Mail Zach Creighton is a quantitative finance recruiter and founder of Hemans. Hemans is a premier staffing and search agency with specialization in the Financial Services Corporate Governance sector. Zach talks about his journey into the career of recruiting, misconceptions about recruiters, sourcing talent, and tips for those looking for jobs in the quantitative finance space. Zach&a...

Send us Fan Mail I had a great time talking with Stan Uryasev and learning about his journey to quantitative finance. Stan is one of the authors of the original paper on Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR). CVaR is taught in almost every finance program and has had a large impact on the finance community. Stan is also a professor and endowed chair of Stony Brook's Quantitative Finance program wh...