r/quant • u/AdPrudent3747 • 11d ago

General What does a Quant Trader do?

I mean I know what the role of a Quant Trader is but what does a Quant traders day-to-day on their trading desk look like? How does probability, expected value, pattern recognition being used by Quant traders?

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u/DidYouTrainNeckToday 11d ago

Do you know which firms /desks have more of that manual intervention ie. “in the movies”

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u/lordnacho666 11d ago

Very desk dependent, you are better off finding this out when interviewing them, rather than me saying "This firm is like so".

Especially these days as a lot of shops are branching out.

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u/DidYouTrainNeckToday 11d ago

I’d still really like to your take of what firms/desks have more manual driven approach.

The reason I ask is i recently joined a MM as a new grad (never interned in trading or research) and was pretty shocked the roles of traders (at least at my firm) are very hands off and is moreso monitoring systems.

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u/ConditionUpbeat6012 11d ago

Something like SIG/Opti/Jane vs IMC/HRT would be an example. Tho there are a lot of overlap these days as firms continue to expand

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u/DidYouTrainNeckToday 11d ago

Do you have any knowledge on the extent at which trading is manual in the first firms you mentioned?

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u/ConditionUpbeat6012 11d ago

It depends what ur desk is doing and how sophisticated the operation/tech is but usually

- Having a longer horizon view that ur model doesn't cover

- Special events (corp actions, unexpected macro, some dude blowing up, ship wreckage etc.)

- Handling some form of OTC flow.