Send us a text As a book review I give "Operation Paperclip" 5/5 stars! I'm not typically a big fan of popular paperback books (non textbooks). The dilemma in the books shows a brief insight into some of the horrible killings and crimes as well as the potential or perceived need for the science to end WWII with Japan as well as fend of Russia (cold war). Determining who was of value was challenging and many of the crimes were swept under the rug. As someone who practices science it is understand...
Jul 16, 2023•12 min
Send us a text I met Christina Qi virtually at the Princeton Quant Conference in 2023. I was really impressed with her presentation on hedge funds, data, and career advice. I connected with her on LinkedIn and found her posts insightful as she explains a lot about what she is doing career-wise even when it isn't the trendy thing to do. I invited her as a guest on the podcast to learn more about her and her career. One of the best points she makes in this interview is the importance of work-life ...
Jun 20, 2023•44 min
Send us a text The finance industry seems to be following the social movement of adding bias and personal opinions instead of allowing the invisible hand of capitalism to properly assign and balance resources and outcomes. Consulting firms are now coming up with politically driven definitions of bias instead of using the mathematical definition and customers can choose their definitions. From a logical standpoint, choosing a definition is the opposite of non-bias. This approach of choosing your ...
Jun 06, 2023•25 min
Send us a text This past podcast season was a lot of fun and I got more interaction and ideas from listeners than ever before. The next season will be in the fall however I have not started planning yet. Let me know what your ideas are for an episode or season and I will try to work them into the next season. If you have found these episodes helpful, please share them on Linked or Twitter. Or if you are on the podcast, write a review on one of the podcasting sites such as Apple Podcasts. uKkoRNR...
May 23, 2023•4 min•Season 6Ep. 18
Send us a text So I had a previous video many months ago answering a subscriber's question regarding conflict at work. They were concerned with a list of issues that were ethical in nature and how to handling it. They were a junior employee and wanted advice on what to do. My advice was to just look for a new job. A comment on that video stated that it was good to know finding a new job was the correct solution as there always seems to be a more complex solution that could be better. I didn't me...
May 16, 2023•18 min•Season 6Ep. 17
Send us a text As this channel focuses on quantitative finance and risk management, I tend to focus on financial topics specific to the industry and not personal finance. Due to many requests over the years I will explain how I manage my personal finances. I use a waterfall approach. I have a value selected for the maximum amount I need in my checking account. That amount is enough to cover my daily expenses such as rent, food, utilities, clothing, and typical splurges. You can determine this fr...
May 09, 2023•19 min•Season 6Ep. 16
Send us a text I had an absolute blast at the Princeton Quant Conference! The campus was amazing and my first time visiting, the students from schools all over the north east were interesting and excited in quant finance, and the other speakers and organizers were engaging. It was a great opportunity to meet new people and hear new ideas. If you have a chance to attend as a student, I highly recommend it. Support the show...
May 07, 2023•13 min•Season 6Ep. 15
Send us a text As an educator (content creator), holder of two degrees, and industry practitioner I see the struggle of providing quality education to the right people at the right price. The false narrative that everyone needs a college degree needs to stop. The majority of jobs do not need a college degree. Many jobs need training and universities are not qualified to provide all types of education. Education in the US is very expensive and this is due to many reasons. Some of those reasons ar...
May 02, 2023•13 min•Season 6Ep. 14
Send us a text This episode is more of a podcast and YouTube update. I have a lot of great ideas for videos however I have been struggling to make content lately. Many of the ideas need a series of videos with structure and organization. They would also be amazing with coding example and beautiful charts however I have been so overwhelmed the last 6-12 months that I have not been making any of these sort of videos. As a more recent update, I have been focusing on using my digital pad more. This ...
Apr 25, 2023•12 min•Season 6Ep. 13
Send us a text 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 support. It takes more than a rockstar quant to get everything put together and running. Many teams fail...
Apr 18, 2023•26 min•Season 6Ep. 12
Send us a text 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 departments at the banks however the quantitative finance departments (risk management and model development) are se...
Apr 11, 2023•44 min•Season 6Ep. 11
Send us a text 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 Algebra (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/3JIL9pD Website: https://www.FancyQuantNation.com Support: https://...
Apr 04, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 6Ep. 10
Send us a text 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 can't do everything, it will never be able to do everything, and it shouldn't do everything. There see...
Apr 02, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 9
Send us a text 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 is nearly impossible. From my personal work I have found one such person who would have done amazing ...
Mar 28, 2023•10 min•Season 6Ep. 8
Send us a text 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 TO BE UNIQUE! I often find that I do not fit into the group molds for "quant finance", "finance", "an academic", "a ...
Mar 14, 2023•13 min•Season 6Ep. 6
Send us a text 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 data. This conversation could have went for many hours as the number of interesting economic topics is quite large. May...
Mar 14, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 6Ep. 7
Send us a text 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 the wide range of data available especially some of their more unique alternative data sources. Video Ve...
Mar 01, 2023•55 min•Season 6Ep. 5
Send us a text 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 topic of the video. This year I will try and create a few more educational videos on YouTube that are simplified. ...
Feb 28, 2023•9 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Send us a text 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 about however for most quants this is just tedious and boring. The highs of a manager though really come ...
Feb 21, 2023•19 min•Season 6Ep. 3
Send us a text 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. The main areas I see for defining communication are technical, social and cultural, and personality. Within each one of...
Feb 14, 2023•19 min•Season 6Ep. 2
Send us a text 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 briefly review again why I think fintech was a good decision for me as well as why I didn't go into tech. Supp...
Dec 23, 2022•18 min•Season 6Ep. 1
Send us a text 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 the "BAM!" came from. I highly recommend his new book and I will eventually do a book review. If you are...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Send us a text 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 sides have merits and I think it is important to recognize there are good companies and bad companies. Some companies understand a work-...
Aug 30, 2022•10 min
Send us a text 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 highs just mediocre. Find what you love as well as a career that can the afford your desired lifestyle! There isn't muc...
Jul 26, 2022•21 min•Season 5Ep. 12
Send us a text 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 principles. People think this means taking just a quick undergrad course or MOOC however this is far from wh...
Jul 19, 2022•22 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Send us a text 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 even more useless predictions. I respond to a few arguments made by a subscriber such as the focus on how humans w...
Jul 12, 2022•33 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Send us a text 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 that needs to be manually reviewed. 3) When issues are found, manual output is still required. 4) Anyone ...
Jul 05, 2022•22 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Send us a text 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 down some of the big areas within quantitative finance (buy side, sell side, crypto and de-fi, and fintech)...
Jun 28, 2022•21 min
Send us a text 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 manager. Video version available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lhM2cDsFHJs Website: https://www.FancyQuantNation....
Jun 21, 2022•18 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Send us a text 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 discussing lessons I have learned from bad managers. Website: https://www.FancyQuantNation.com Quant t-shirts, m...
Jun 14, 2022•27 min•Season 5Ep. 6
