Talking Tuesdays with Fancy Quant

Send us Fan Mail Building a quant team, a data science team, or just an analytics team is challenging. Online there are many stories of why data science teams fail however all roles that build models or predict values using data run into similar issues. Getting a full pipeline from data to results requires a lot of pieces including data quality, training, hiring, external education, and process su...

Send us Fan Mail I left banking about a year ago and many people have asked me why I left. The reason I left is the same reason we're seeing many banks fail. Banks have abandoned meritocracy in favor of political agendas. These agendas have resulted in not hiring or promoting the best candidates but in looking at ways to make the world look how they want it. This issue is across all departmen...

Send us Fan Mail I had a blast chatting with David Shimko. We discussed a range of topics from his new book that he is working on that covers a more modern approach to valuation to education and training of new quants. Some interesting topics covered are around the CAPM and options pricing. Simpler Option Pricing (David Shimko): https://youtu.be/uYnYWucILBc Dan Stefanica's Primer on Linear Al...

Send us Fan Mail As the release of ChatGPT has become a popular topic there is a lot of discussion and speculation on what it can do and what it will do in the future. While the ML, AI, and tech industry is head over heals for a model it seems many other groups are also being swept up in the over excitement including finance (Bloomberg GPT). While GPT is ground breaking with the chat interface it...

Send us Fan Mail As I am building a risk management department I am also building the smaller teams within which include model development, model validation, enterprise risk management, and governance. Two of the most critical people are those who lead model development and model validation. Finding technically competent quants is hard enough but requiring they can be a leader, mentor, and teacher...

Send us Fan Mail Life is hard and not enough people admit that. Finding people who will support you unconditionally is very challenging as this small group of people is often called your "tribe." It is easy to get swept away on social media and think you have a large tribe. The pressure to fit into groups that you find interesting as well also erodes your uniqueness. DON'T BE AFRAID...

Send us Fan Mail A friend of mine, C.R. Olschwang recently wrote a book, "Mainline Business Cycle Theory." I don't often get the chance to discuss economics with economists as there are not very many in banks or fintech. In this chat we discuss economics schools of thought, what is mainline vs mainstream economics, ESG, economic models, utility functions, and issues with economic da...

Send us Fan Mail Jared Broad from QuantConnect is our guest today. We discuss why QuantConnect is open source along with many of the struggles with getting, cleaning, and managing data. QuantConnect helps you get quality data for model and strategy development and then helps you get that strategy implemented onto the exchanges with minimal effort. One of the coolest things about QuantConnect is th...

Send us Fan Mail After interviewing Josh Starmer from StateQuest I thought a lot more about his channel and his style. Often I get bogged down in the quantitative finance method of trying to be formal and overly complex. Josh's style of teaching is much more straight forward and simplified. He doesn't cover a wide range of tangents and uses which are interesting but sticks to the core to...

Send us Fan Mail Being a manager has pros and cons jus like every job. For most quants the worst part of a management job is planning and organizing employee work. You have to work with other departments which includes setting deadlines and arguing about non-quant topics. On top of that you have to assign work and deal with employee complaints. All of this is what business students get excited abo...

Send us Fan Mail As a quant you constantly get told you don't communicate well. The real issue is that the fun frilly books written by business professionals or psychologists are too optimistic and too simple. People don't just fit into a few main groups. If people did, communication would be simple. We wouldn't have new books published every year on how to improve communication. Th...

Send us Fan Mail At the beginning of 2022 I left banking and took a five month career break. I was approached during this time with a variety of offers in banking, technology, and fintech. I made a previous episode on why I went into fintech but didn't mention very much about the firm or the final decision. So today I will discuss a bit more about why I accepted the fintech offer and will bri...

Send us Fan Mail Josh Starmer is the founder and creator of StatQuest which is a YouTube channel designed to help people learn statistics and machine learning. I have been following his channel for 5+ years now and have learned a lot from him. In our chat we learn about his background (including some biology), why he started the YouTube channel, his passion for music, and most importantly where th...

Send us Fan Mail What is "quiet quitting" and why is everyone talking about it? There are really two differently defined perspectives on this issue. One side is saying, "hey, employees need a good work-life balance so quiet quitting is just doing what you are asked." While others are seeing it as "doing the bare minimum meaning just enough not to get fired." Both side...

Send us Fan Mail To wrap up season 5 I figured I would talk about the importance of loving your career. I've had many highs and lows over the years and I know for a fact that if I didn't love what I do, I would have left the industry years ago. Building any career requires work but working on a career you don't love will end up being twice the work. The lows will be lower and the hi...

Send us Fan Mail Future proofing your career especially in STEM fields is very important. New trendy fields and jobs pop up every few years and often the advice give is to run towards the new thing. This is usually one of the worst ideas as you get a shallow education as the field is new and you risk that field not being popular moving forward. My advice is focus on the core skills or first princi...

Send us Fan Mail I recently made a video discussing the SEC's proposal to have all publicly traded firms calculate their environmental impact. At a first glance it sounds very reasonable and who doesn't want to help the planet? Well it turns out that the environmental experts struggle to model human impacts in the planet. Having a bunch of firms with no environmental impact would make ev...

Send us Fan Mail Why does automating model validations fail? Goals/Plan: 1) Specify the model 2) Runs the development model for a replication check 3) Output of all possible analysis for that model type is produced including challenger models Reasons it Failed: 1) Data and their processes vary from department to department and change across time without warning. 2) Too much output is generated tha...

Send us Fan Mail Should you get a quant masters degree during a recession? As the market has started to fall many students are wondering whether or not they should go to the masters programs that they have been accepted to. For quants it can be very challenging to find work during an economic recession because money isn't flowing which means many firms are not hiring. In this episode I break...

Send us Fan Mail Last week's episode was on lessons I learned from good managers and today we discuss lessons from bad managers. Many of the key issues here really come down to being an honest and transparent person (lessons we learned in the episode about building a personal brand). Not doing work and calling people out during meetings is simply bad behavior especially when you are the manag...

Send us Fan Mail Over the years of working I have worked for a few managers and have witnessed a lot of managers of a variety of teams. In today's podcast episode I am discussing the lessons I have learned from good managers. Some of the main lessons are about taking time to make big decisions (time has value) and take a real interest in your team members. Next week's episode will be me...

Send us Fan Mail I often see gimmicky posts or videos about building a personal brand. It is usually about generating a lot of easy worthless content and adding professional headshots and being active in groups on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great place to start however your brand really starts with who you are as a person. Being honest and fair at your day job will bring back much more value in promo...

Send us Fan Mail Hiring for any job is extremely challenging. Getting hired as an employee is also extremely challenging. Today I cover the biggest issue on why firms can't find the right candidates as well as why individuals who are fully qualified can't find good jobs. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail After 8 years in the banking I quit my job. I quit my job as a quant in the risk management area. I have built, validated, audited, and implemented model across a range of financial products at a range of different banks. I have felt burnt out for a few years but wasn't sure what to do. After Covid hit the world and a bad work experience I decided to just leave and take some...

Send us Fan Mail I quit (resigned) my job for a variety of reasons with one being an ultimatum to comply and leave. After leaving, the stress went away and I could see more clearly the rate race I was struck in beforehand. As I read articles online about the great resignation months before it seemed like people were quitting for more money and nicer teams. There was a casual sprinkling of differen...