Entry Level Quant Required by Leading London Hedge Fund to work on Systematic Trading Strategies recruitment
My client is one of the lading names in the European Hedge Fund industry. Located in the West End of London, they are one of the oldest hedge funds going, with an excellent reputation amongst the quantitative investment community. As a result when much of their competition was losing money and/or investment capital, they managed to retain their position in terms of AUM and performance.
The business is run on highly collaborative lines. They have teams of researchers who pool their skills and knowledge to create fully systematic strategies across a broad range of liquid asset classes at various frequencies (from a few weeks down to a few seconds per trade). This means that the quantitative strategists have a much broader exposure to strategies and markets than they would do at other firms that tend to operate along less agile terms. Furthermore new employees are given unlimited exposure to their algorithms and are able to get an understanding of the entire business rather than small chunks of the overall picture – greatly enhancing future employability and skillset.
The algorithms which they implement to automatically trade the markets are the result of the analysis of extensive amounts of historical market data. The quants are responsible for this analysis with the goals of spotting patterns. The ultimate goal is predicting what the market will do. In addition the team is responsible for backtesting and implementing these models.
In terms of skills, my client looks for a combination of any of the following:
-statistical analysis (time series analysis, monte carlo simulations etc)
-knowledge of probability theory (Bayesian theory, random walks, binomial distributions etc)
-quantitative research
-computer programming (such as C++/R/Matlab)
-understanding of modern portfolio theory
It is a highly academic environment and successful candidates in the past have typically come from PhDs and Postdoctoral research positions with leading academic institutions in the following subjects:
-applied statistics/mathematics
-probability theory
-machine learning
-artificial intelligence
-theoretical physics
-computer science
If you would be interested in discussing this position in confidence, please call Will on 020 7257 6207 or email me at w.murday@njfsearch.com