
Why UBS Is Hiring So Many Quants - jeo1234
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-09/ubs-wealth-management-s-haefele-joins-battle-to-recruit-quants
======
chollida1
Some one is bound to mention PG's submarine article,
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)
so it might as well be me.

I mean yesterday we had an article about how Goldman was making its SecDB
available to high networth individuals and today we've got another article
about how UBS is targeting the same group.

UBS hasn't traditionally been held in the same tier as Goldamn Sachs etc as
far as trading and quant jobs go, but one area they do excel in is a more
traditional banking are, Wealth management for high worth individuals.

This is the area of the bank the article is talking about.

They are trying to be for high worth people, what Wealthfront or Betterment is
for middle class people in that they are trying to bring money strategies that
previously were the area of hedge funds to high net worth individuals.

~~~
smallnamespace
Asset management has been a decent growth segment for Goldman since '09, as
money started shifted out of trading.

See p. 59 - [http://www.goldmansachs.com/investor-
relations/financials/cu...](http://www.goldmansachs.com/investor-
relations/financials/current/annual-reports/2015-annual-report/annual-
report-2015.pdf)

p. 51 -
[http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/2012annual/assets/downloads/GS...](http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/2012annual/assets/downloads/GS_AR12_Complete_Fin.pdf)

~10% YoY growth since 2010; Investment Banking has actually grown a bit
quicker than that.

As much as the Volcker Rule has been watered down, it's still having a big
impact on banks' ability to take on risk via their trading desks, so you're
seeing them shift back into the classic businesses of making deals (investment
banking), making rich people richer (private wealth), and making rich
institutions richer (investment management in general).

------
polskibus
Does UBS really oversee $2 trillion or is it a mistake? Further in the article
it says that $1.5b is managed by quants. That is a very low proportion.

~~~
zhte415
Oversee..

$2 trillion must include assets under custody, though I did think UBS had 3-4
trillion under custody, which is smaller than some of the biggest names, BNY
Mellon, State Street, JP Morgan, Citi, Euroclear.

Under custody absolutely does not mean under management. Oversee is true:
Their corporate governance is trusted to ensure these assets are held in safe
keeping and administered for example for tax. It does not mean actively
invested.

$1.5bn (managed by quants) is still a small number. My second job, at 24, was
on a team of 5 people (total) that actively managed $6bn; the team was
remarkably lean.

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justinlardinois
Is "quant" finance industry jargon? I picked up the meaning from reading the
article but I'm not familiar with the term.

~~~
alsocasey
Quant-itative analyst. Yes, industry jargon.

~~~
bboreham
Even worse, some banks use the initials "QA" for the function, completely
ignoring the idea that those initials already have a meaning in software
development.

~~~
justinlardinois
Finance has existed longer than software development; I think you might be
mixing up the chicken and the egg here.

~~~
pavlov
Surely quality assurance (QA) has been a concern in physical products since
the Industrial Revolution started. It's not a software industry term.

~~~
justinlardinois
Finance precedes the Industrial Revolution as well. But I think the real
question is when each of those terms came into being.

------
Annatar
The problem is that physicists and mathematicians write the worst code I have
ever seen in my entire life, and I've been programming for 30+ years. To those
people, everything is a single threaded, algorithmic problem, even when it is
crystal clear to a formally trained programmer that using a well thought out
data structure is the correct thing to do[1][2].

For example, they managed to break my Vertica database from delivering instant
results (something it is explicitly designed for in "big data" scenarios) to
running 18+ hours for a single SQL query.

[1] Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data, so program logic can be
stupid and robust.

[http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878...](http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878263)

[2] Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and
simplicity.

[http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878...](http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878145)

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ImTalking
More and more dollars pumped into smaller and smaller returns.

------
_itsok
I have a phone interview for a quant position in Goldman's Strats. Tips?

~~~
thefastlane
what is your academic background? do you know which strats group?

------
known
To design/develop more trading algorithms :)

------
flint
We are hiring quants. They make pictures we give to some of our clients. We
have even been able to hire women.

------
aemus
9■2¥ee₩223

------
larrik
I clicked on the link just to find out what a "Quant" was. Answer:
quantitative analysts

~~~
jasonkostempski
Me too. Looks like it's been used for a while but I never saw until this week
and this was the second time I saw it. Sounds derogatory.

~~~
kchoudhu
Quants are the guys who run the math so that the bat-wielding psychopaths that
are traders don't accidentaly shoot their feet off. They usually have PHDs.

They have some prestige on the trading floor.

Edit: They don't _literally_ have bats, you guys. But when the guy who's
paying you ~250K a year looks over your shoulder and asks for a risk report,
the effect is more or less the same.

~~~
infinite8s
I've noticed that on trading floors. Why do traders keep bats at their desks?
Are they actually intimating threats of violence to support staff who are
stuck on the floor dealing with them?

~~~
yellowstuff
I think the bats are mostly intended to be humorous, but at least occasionally
they are actually used as weapons.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-12/ex-
barclay...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-12/ex-barclays-
trader-in-libor-case-says-his-boss-hit-him-with-bat)

~~~
rz2k
Hitting someone with a 12-inch bat is probably better than stabbing a cab
driver with a penknife.[1]

[1] [http://dealbreaker.com/2012/12/in-wake-of-exec-
accidentally-...](http://dealbreaker.com/2012/12/in-wake-of-exec-accidentally-
stabbing-a-cab-driver-morgan-stanley-insists-you-ask-what-would-the-post-say/)

------
tonmoy
They should hire a good web developer, the security "features" on their one
source web app if hilarious.

