> I remember as a quant trader we could buy any book we wanted. Programming, Linear Algebra, finance, whatever. "If you find just one good idea, that will pay f

> I remember as a quant trader we could buy any book we wanted. Programming, Linear Algebra, finance, whatever. "If you find just one good idea, that will pay for all the books." Hard to argue with considering the sums involved, but it's also hard to know exactly what ideas we got out of the books. I agree with your overall sentiment, but think you might be overapplying it here. According to glassdoor [0], the average salary for a quant trader is $146k, not counting other forms of compensation and employee overhead. Even the most expensive book only needs to save a few hours of effort to pay for itself, let alone provide an idea you wouldn't otherwise have. Even if it doesn't pay for itself directly, it is cheap enough to justify for retention reasons alone [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/quantitative-trader-salary-SRCH_KO0,19.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/quantitative-trader-salar...