Andrew, Citadel Quant Finance Careers & Olympic Athlete- with Kaushik & Nick, Elevate Career Network

If you've ever been interested or curious about quant finance - which is the the next frontier of finance, one of the hottest and most competitive areas in investing, at the nexus of top finance & technology, this is the discussion for you. Even if you haven't thought about it yet, you will still find it fascinating. 

This week's guest is ridiculously accomplished - an Olympic (Rio 2016) & World-championship-level athlete, while concurrently, building his equally successful finance career in quant at Citadel, one of the foremost hedge funds in the world. It also has amazing lessons on developing the mindset to become the best at anything - be it in business, career, sports or life. 

Interviewed by Kaushik & Nick from Elevate Career Network Team

04:25 Pursuing his Olympic aspirations
05:00 How he got his first job at Quantopian - knew nothing about Quant
07:00 Started by answering customer tickets, then got the opportunity to build their crowd-sourced hedge fund product from ground up
08:30 His experience at Citadel
11:00 Feedback cycle from quant investing is quick
13:30 Coming to Citadel was a game-changer
14:30 What is quantitative finance? Deep-dive - Building & Weighting Datasets, Fitting / portfolio construction, Predictions, Mapping to Positions
20:00 Why Citadel? To learn, you have to work with the best. Citadel is a pioneer, and has given him a world-class education
23:30 In the next 5 years, the advantage to scale that exists in the top 5 funds will only grow. The era of small start-up quant funds is over
29:30 Develop mindset for things are out of your control - just part of the game
35:00 How to balance demands of Olympic athlete and working at Citadel
35:30 Dealing with disappointment of missing London Olympics
38:30 Key to career success: Be fearless enough to dig into the details and be self-sufficient to figure things out tough problems
42:30 Common misconception: You don't have to be a STEM major to be in quant or in technical roles. Don't be intimidated by engineering
45:30 Interviews at Citadel: What he looks for in interviews, why communication skills are critical even for technical interviews
49:00 Two main tracks in Quant: Quant Development (QD) and Quant Research (QR)
52:30 Rapid Fire: Favorite Book (Man Who Solved the Markets, Flash Boys); and more

#hedgefunds #finance #quant #investing