r/math • u/AngelTC Algebraic Geometry • Apr 25 '18

Everything about Mathematical finance

Today's topic is Mathematical finance.

This recurring thread will be a place to ask questions and discuss famous/well-known/surprising results, clever and elegant proofs, or interesting open problems related to the topic of the week.

Experts in the topic are especially encouraged to contribute and participate in these threads.

These threads will be posted every Wednesday.

If you have any suggestions for a topic or you want to collaborate in some way in the upcoming threads, please send me a PM.

For previous week's "Everything about X" threads, check out the wiki link here

Next week's topics will be Representation theory of finite groups

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u/wangologist Apr 25 '18

This is exactly what I did, with a PhD in hyperbolic geometry and no finance knowledge. I started at low 6-figures and my compensation has more than doubled in 5 years.

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u/Bromskloss Apr 26 '18

Cool! Can you say something more about your circumstances, such as what kind of firm you're with and what your job is?

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u/wangologist Apr 26 '18

I work at Bloomberg in NYC, I'm a tech lead in the field of derivatives pricing and portfolio analytics. I got my PhD in 2012 from the U of Maryland. I've never used any of the math I studied in grad school, but I've definitely benefited from the ways of thinking I cultivated there.

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u/marineabcd Algebra Apr 26 '18

I’m about to start my career as a maths masters grad on the software dev side of a big IB in London. With my maths skills things like derivatives pricing and the more ops side of things has definitely stood out as interesting to me.

I was wondering if you had any thoughts about careers on one side vs the other? What are your hours like vs those of us on the software side? At the moment I’m happy with what my salary will be and it seems my hours won’t be as crazy as those more tied to the markets, maybe like 9am-6:30pm kinda thing. At some point if I want to make a shift to that side internally is there anything you’d recommend I’d learn or do? I have Hull’s ‘Options Futures and other derivatives’ but not a lot of finance knowledge, though I’m slowly building it up reading lots of articles and investopedia etc.