Doing some research on my own time, out of curiosity, what string

Your major doesn't matter.

>>1389919
Any quantitative major + programming knowledge

Algo trading is hard to get in to

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146KB, 540x810px

>>1389919
Financial engineering from an Ivy is you best bet for a solid future

If that is not possible, double major in Math and Finance. Econ is useless if your looking to get into hedge funds.

A lot of guys who get into that stuff surprisingly have physics degrees and then learn CS stuff later

I guess it's more of a mindset thing than anything

>>1389919
need to be in an ivy league school m8

>>1389919
Unless your dad owns a hedge fund, there's close to a 0% chance you'll be working at one coming out of college.

>>1390971
This. My uncle works at Cerberus Capital Management and I couldn't even get a job there straight out of undergrad. Keep in mind I also wen to Columbia for undergrad and double majored with a 3.8gpa. Sometimes life isn't fair.

>>1391003
I like this post I think it's pretty funny

>>1390293
fiinance courses/derivatives pricing etc.. is not much use for specifically 'quant hedgefunds'

>>1389919
Either mathematics or physics.

>>1389919
>what string of majors is best suited for a career in the world of hedge funds, in specific quant hedge funds.

mathematics and statistics... though you'll find a fair few physicists in these jobs

but it is silly to pick a major based on this as you've got very little chance of getting the job anyway - these days they'll tend to want PhD candidates for junior researcher positions - decent stats knowledge is expected (though you don't require a PhD in stats) and increasingly some knowledge of machine learning is very desirable... programming skills also desirable though the set up is often that the researchers will be using R, Matlab, python etc.. and some devs/quant devs will be working on the production system in C++ or something JVM based

finance classes are a waste of time for most of these funds - they're generally systematic CTAs taking directional punts in futures... how much finance knowledge do you need for that? Naff all really it is data mugging and signal generation that you'll be doing... i.e. a research background (PhD + stats knowledge) is the desirable thing here

don't mistake 'quant' in a quant hedge fund with 'quant' in a bank - the skill set required is completely different... financial engineering courses etc.. are geared towards quant jobs in banks i.e. derivative pricing... not signal generation from big data sets

Q/KDB is another useful skill set to have... 32bit version is now available freely under a non commercial license

>>1391409
>but it is silly to pick a major based on this as you've got very little chance of getting the job anyway

also it would be silly for you to pick a PhD for this reason too...

if you happen to be very interested in stats and interested in pursuing a PhD in that area or similar (EE grad pursing a PhD related to signal processing is also a relevant background for these jobs) then these sorts of jobs might be worth applying to... but they're very competitive and you've only got a slim chance of getting one

if you're pursuing a PhD purely to try and get some research role at a quant hedge fund then you're likely making a very big mistake... not only will you have a high chance of failing the PhD to begin with (since you're pursuing it for the wrong reasons) but even if you do finish, you're likely not going to get the job so you'd better enjoy whatever other work is available to you with that skillset