

Financial Software Projects (C++) - NYU Fall 2011 - zura
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall11/CSCI-GA.3033-003/

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JumpCrisscross
As someone who was a trader on a derivatives prop desk I would suggest those
interested in finance with solid coding skills skip being a 20-year old's peon
and:

(1) Join a quant fund, e.g. Renaissance, Two Sigma, Citadel, etc., or,

(2) Join a finance tech start-up, e.g. Palantir, Addepar, SecondMarket,
Wealthfront, etc. who are liable to turn the industry over in the near future

Both options require you be more than a "developer" (in the Wall St sense).
Coding is a means by which to express your edge in data analysis and
algorithmics. A coder who knows some finance is a "dev". A dev who knows
statistical methods is a "quant". A quant who can engineer new trades is a
Master of the Universe (and one to put the phone monkeys to shame at that).

 _Note about the course books_ : this explains a lot about our devs. They have
you implement VaR and other theoretically sophisticated programmes while
giving a ram-jet flyover of finance that would leave you helpless with more
the intricate articles in _The Economist_ ; it's the equivalent of learning CS
theory with no coding experience or math through memorisation.

 _Note about note_ : I'm not criticising the course _per se_. It does a fine
job of preparing a CS student for being a developer on Wall St. I'm targeting
this more to the HN community, who I feel would be wasted talent in that role.

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larsberg
Make sure to investigate the firm and, in particular, their enforcement of
non-competes before you join to ensure you are comfortable with their terms.
One of the three in your bullet (1) has a long history of enforcing (and
backing up with Full Legal Might) an 18-month non-compete on even somewhat
competent developers and traders.

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JumpCrisscross
Or an effective lifetime non-compete if you're talking about Renaissance. Then
again, their flagship fund, which is now only open to employees, regularly
beats 50% annualised returns after fees.

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AznHisoka
I took a similar class a few years ago at NYU.

All I can say is classes always look better at paper than they do in real-
life. I learned absolutely nothing of substance, and found it a waste of time.
But YMMV.

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alanpca
Oh man, I wish this was available when I was in school. This field has always
interested me, but it seems that the bar of entry is super high (trading
account).

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pnathan
There are a variety of companies that offer some level of programmatic access
for trading.

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Nrsolis
An Interactive Brokers trading account with a minimum 10K USD deposit will get
you access to their trading API. If you can deposit 25K, you'll be OK with
pattern day-trader status and gain 4x leverage for your account.

They also offer a paper-trading account for testing purposes. They give you
$1M in funny money to trade with to test your algos.

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darkmethod
Can you please provide more information on this? A link would be fantastic.
Thanks.

~~~
Nrsolis
<http://www.interactivebrokers.com/ibg/main.php>

[http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/pagemap/pagemap...](http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/pagemap/pagemap_APISolutions.php)

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Drbble
For everyone lamenting not being able to take _this class_. Taking the class
is the least important aspect. Going to college or equivalent and learning and
practicing how to think hard are all you need classes for. Anyone who has
completed a degree in any hard science /math /engineering can learn this
material from the books and websites and forums.

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jordhy
This is actually one of the hottest fields in C/C++ software development.
Either high frequency trading or machine learning based transactions are in
very high demand. I wish I could take this class.

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chollida1
I'm not sure what a developer can learn about software engineering from Soul
of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder but it is an awesome book.

I'd recommend people read it for pleasure.

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dustineichler
I'm kinda finance geek, but I know nothing about this field programmatically.
This looks amazing. Anyone have any other links worth looking at?

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rluhar
You may want to check out the forums at wilmott.com or the forums at
nuclearphynance.com

A lot of work in finance is also done in statistical programming languages
like R. Some firms have also made big investment in vector processing / APL
type languages like q (or k) and time series databases like kdb+.

Event processing / correlation platforms and programming is also gaining a lot
of traction in finance. Progress Software's Apama platform, Streambase, and a
bunch of other start ups are competing in this space as well.

Technology in finance is huge. It goes from building pricing models for
derivatives and bonds (post under discussion), high frequency trading (FPGAs,
event correlation,etc), to trade processing (high throughput transaction
processing), to web app development (retail trading platforms, ebanking).... I
could keep going on and on. It is wide field and if you are interested in
working in technology in finance, it is safe to say you could find some nice
in which you could use your skills. Obviously pay grades, job quality, etc.
vary..

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dustineichler
I'm only familiar with building pricing models. Thanks for the quick list and
links. I kinda want to get into this.

Sans hat tip.

