7 ms·

Why UBS Is Hiring So Many Quants

86 points by jeo1234 10y ago

chollida1 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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/current/annual-reports/2015-annual-report/annual-report-2015.pdf http://www.goldmansachs.com/investor-relations/financials/cu... p. 51 - http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/2012annual/assets/downloads/GS_AR12_Complete_Fin.pdf http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/2012annual/assets/downloads/GS... ~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).
- gnarbarian 10y ago
  Something really bugs me about the extent and influence of PR firms. It reminds me of how lobbiests often end up writing the bills submitted by legislature. Or sponsored articles masquerading as unbiased informative reporting. It all seems very corrupt to me.
larrik 10y ago
I clicked on the link just to find out what a "Quant" was. Answer: quantitative analysts
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  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.
  - insaneirish 10y ago
    Not new and not derogatory: https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Quant-Reflections-Physics/dp/0470192739 https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Quant-Reflections-Physics/dp/...
    - melling 10y ago
      And it's not a term new to HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=quant%20&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=quant%20&sort=byPopularity&pre... Why do people play TIL on HN?
    - ryanmonroe 10y ago
      In the book he notes that it started out as a derogatory term. Can't find the quote in the book but I found this http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16FOB-OnLanguage-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16FOB-OnLanguage-... "When I asked Derman recently about his early years in finance, he said that at first he felt that quant, like rocket scientist before it, was largely a derogatory put-down for the brainy newcomers, many of them foreign-born: 'two-thirds pejorative, one-third grudging praise,' by his calculation."
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jedmeyers 10y ago
    Here is a quite amusing clip "Jenga" from the movie The Big Short on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpsI_Gvn7C8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpsI_Gvn7C8 BTW, most quants that I know don't find the term derogatory, quite the opposite.
polskibus 10y ago
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.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  Not a mistake: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/ubs-morgan-stanley-lead-wealth-managers-with-record-2-trillion http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/ubs-morgan...
- leereeves 10y ago
  I think they mean that of the $2 trillion they oversee, just $1.5 billion is managed by quants.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  This includes their wealth management division. The relationship between customer and their wealth manager can range from very stringent "Buy AAA bonds and index funds for my account, rotate quarterly to harvest tax losses, always keep 5% in cash" to "Maximize my gains by taking various bets that might or might not be associated with UBS". On the trading side they would have a variety of instruments (hedge fund is probably the most convenient and easily understood wrapper for various "miscellaneous" financial activity, but there are also private REITs, MLPs, CEFs, etc.) which would then try to attract funds. The funds would bring money from various sources, such as firm's own money, partners' personal capital, as well as wealth managers, some of which could be associated with UBS. This is the actual money available to quants.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zhte415 10y ago
  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.
tonmoy 10y ago
They should hire a good web developer, the security "features" on their one source web app if hilarious.
_itsok 10y ago
I have a phone interview for a quant position in Goldman's Strats. Tips?
- thefastlane 10y ago
  what is your academic background? do you know which strats group?
ImTalking 10y ago
More and more dollars pumped into smaller and smaller returns.
flint 10y ago
We are hiring quants. They make pictures we give to some of our clients. We have even been able to hire women.
known 10y ago
To design/develop more trading algorithms :)
justinlardinois 10y ago
Is "quant" finance industry jargon? I picked up the meaning from reading the article but I'm not familiar with the term.
- alsocasey 10y ago
  Quant-itative analyst. Yes, industry jargon.
  - bboreham 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      Finance has existed longer than software development; I think you might be mixing up the chicken and the egg here.
      - pavlov 10y ago
        Surely quality assurance (QA) has been a concern in physical products since the Industrial Revolution started. It's not a software industry term.
        justinlardinois 10y ago
        Finance precedes the Industrial Revolution as well. But I think the real question is when each of those terms came into being.
Annatar 10y ago
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#id2878263 http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878... [2] Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity. http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878145 http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878...
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86 points by jeo1234 10y ago

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 10y ago
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/current/annual-reports/2015-annual-report/annual-report-2015.pdf http://www.goldmansachs.com/investor-relations/financials/cu... p. 51 - http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/2012annual/assets/downloads/GS_AR12_Complete_Fin.pdf http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/2012annual/assets/downloads/GS... ~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).
gnarbarian 10y ago
Something really bugs me about the extent and influence of PR firms. It reminds me of how lobbiests often end up writing the bills submitted by legislature. Or sponsored articles masquerading as unbiased informative reporting. It all seems very corrupt to me.

larrik 10y ago

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

jasonkostempski 10y ago
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.
- insaneirish 10y ago
  Not new and not derogatory: https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Quant-Reflections-Physics/dp/0470192739 https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Quant-Reflections-Physics/dp/...
  - melling 10y ago
    And it's not a term new to HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=quant%20&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=quant%20&sort=byPopularity&pre... Why do people play TIL on HN?
  - ryanmonroe 10y ago
    In the book he notes that it started out as a derogatory term. Can't find the quote in the book but I found this http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16FOB-OnLanguage-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16FOB-OnLanguage-... "When I asked Derman recently about his early years in finance, he said that at first he felt that quant, like rocket scientist before it, was largely a derogatory put-down for the brainy newcomers, many of them foreign-born: 'two-thirds pejorative, one-third grudging praise,' by his calculation."
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  Here is a quite amusing clip "Jenga" from the movie The Big Short on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpsI_Gvn7C8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpsI_Gvn7C8 BTW, most quants that I know don't find the term derogatory, quite the opposite.

polskibus 10y ago

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.

smallnamespace 10y ago
Not a mistake: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/ubs-morgan-stanley-lead-wealth-managers-with-record-2-trillion http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/ubs-morgan...
leereeves 10y ago
I think they mean that of the $2 trillion they oversee, just $1.5 billion is managed by quants.
prostoalex 10y ago
This includes their wealth management division. The relationship between customer and their wealth manager can range from very stringent "Buy AAA bonds and index funds for my account, rotate quarterly to harvest tax losses, always keep 5% in cash" to "Maximize my gains by taking various bets that might or might not be associated with UBS". On the trading side they would have a variety of instruments (hedge fund is probably the most convenient and easily understood wrapper for various "miscellaneous" financial activity, but there are also private REITs, MLPs, CEFs, etc.) which would then try to attract funds. The funds would bring money from various sources, such as firm's own money, partners' personal capital, as well as wealth managers, some of which could be associated with UBS. This is the actual money available to quants.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
zhte415 10y ago
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.

tonmoy 10y ago

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

_itsok 10y ago

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

thefastlane 10y ago
what is your academic background? do you know which strats group?

ImTalking 10y ago

More and more dollars pumped into smaller and smaller returns.

flint 10y ago

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

known 10y ago

To design/develop more trading algorithms :)

justinlardinois 10y ago

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

alsocasey 10y ago
Quant-itative analyst. Yes, industry jargon.
- bboreham 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    Finance has existed longer than software development; I think you might be mixing up the chicken and the egg here.
    - pavlov 10y ago
      Surely quality assurance (QA) has been a concern in physical products since the Industrial Revolution started. It's not a software industry term.
      - justinlardinois 10y ago
        Finance precedes the Industrial Revolution as well. But I think the real question is when each of those terms came into being.

Annatar 10y ago

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#id2878263 http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878... [2] Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity. http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878145 http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878...

aemus 10y ago

9■2¥ee₩223

kindtadep 10y ago

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