Is the crisis really that bad?

Thanks for the replies, guys!

So far...got another more interesting reply...this time from Citibank, but they invited me to an interview all the way to Frankfurt (which - in all honesty I have no idea what part of Germany that is...let alone that my German level is far from advanced...i guess this offer won't end well). Other than the city guys not even a street dealer :) seems to be interested so far - i guess they need more time to verify the applicants or circle inside the company, ponder over the things I am offering. Basically, I asked almost the same question in another forum and there i was slightly criticized for 'trying too hard' or for the liverpool university - and of course a few guys thought that i have just copy/pasted all of the skills mentioned :). Anyways...I will keep looking for now and now taking some break for an hour or 2. Yeah...good luck to ya all ;).
 
Quote from thenmmm:

Is the crisis really that bad?
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To anyone that would like to learn the answer to your question I would suggest that you visit flea markets, neighborhood (many neighbors) yard sales , estate sales, church flea mkts, etc. Talk to the people. See what prices they are wanting for items you may be familiar with.

I've been doing this for over 20 years to see the real economy and not the propaganda that is disclosed monthly as accurate data by governments and central banks. This way I can tell when things are turning up or down because these places are a proxy for the "canary in a coal mine". They experience it first on the down and are the last to experience it on the upside.

To answer your thread question, yes things are that bad and are getting worse IMO.
 
With all of your knowledge and skills, why in the hell would you want to work for anyone else? Use your models to make yourself money, not others. Or don't you know how?
 
Quote from thenmmm:

Thanks for the replies, guys!

So far...got another more interesting reply...this time from Citibank, but they invited me to an interview all the way to Frankfurt (which - in all honesty I have no idea what part of Germany that is...let alone that my German level is far from advanced...i guess this offer won't end well). Other than the city guys not even a street dealer :) seems to be interested so far - i guess they need more time to verify the applicants or circle inside the company, ponder over the things I am offering. Basically, I asked almost the same question in another forum and there i was slightly criticized for 'trying too hard' or for the liverpool university - and of course a few guys thought that i have just copy/pasted all of the skills mentioned :). Anyways...I will keep looking for now and now taking some break for an hour or 2. Yeah...good luck to ya all ;).
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You should pursue it. Frankfurt is a boring city, but safe, clean, and the trading mecca of the EU next to London. I have relatives close to there. That's where Paul Rotter got his start. Go and interview as long as they pay for travel. Citi is huge I would go if I were you. Besides all Germans speak English under the age of 50.
 
Quote from thenmmm:

Thanks for the replies, guys!

So far...got another more interesting reply...this time from Citibank, but they invited me to an interview all the way to Frankfurt (which - in all honesty I have no idea what part of Germany that is...let alone that my German level is far from advanced...i guess this offer won't end well).
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95% of success in selling is attitude. And you are selling yourself when you apply for a job. Envisioning yourself being successful at the job will do wonders for your interview. You can always turn it down if you find you don't like the location. More importantly, it gives you experience at learning what employers want these days. It will help you modify your marketing program.

Rejection and disappointment are one of the hardest things to deal with in life. You must learn how to deal with it to be successful at trading as well.

Quote from "Everything I Know About Trading (and Investing) I Learned in Flight School" by me

There are two kinds of retractable gear airplane pilots. Those who have landed with their gear up, and those that will.
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Well, today Target has a record number of employees with PHDs. I don't know why anyone is surprised. This all started long before the recession. This is what happens when corporations take over the world.
 
Parts of the country will get worse (Blue states) parts of the country are rebounding (Red States) and the rest of the world, same story. Some regions are doing better, some are getting worse.

That's just the way it is.
 
I was a quant strategist for a large asset manager once (before moving to the trading desk) and I just helped hired a strategist in the last few months. Here's why your cover letter raises red flags and will probably get passed without a call back: (I don't mean to be harsh - just throwing out first impressions)

You are throwing around terms used incorrectly and shows you probably don't know any of them very well. For example, no one would call sharpe ratio, sortino ratio, skewness, etc., econometrics. They are basic statistics/performance concepts. Econometrics usually refer to things like VaR model of the fed funds rate, labor growth, and inflation.

If Kelly Criterion is what you know about risk management, you shouldn't even bother putting it down.

Your "trading" part has so many diverse concepts (neural networks? really? are you just throwing around buzz words? - cause I can't imagine you trade both on fundamentals and also on neural networks) that it's really not credible. It sounds like you don't know any of them well.

Your bit about levy distribution in option pricing is another one of those buzz words heavy concepts that don't really mean anything. We can price options using whatever distributions until the cows come home - the point is that you should do something with it; Tell it me that it is better that "prediction" suggests you aren't really grasping this stuff outside of your course work.

Anyway, I'm sure you know a bit about a lot of these things. But the way you are phrasing them makes you sound like you are pretending to know more than you do. Perhaps that's the problem ? That's why I would pass on your resume.


Quote from thenmmm:

So...I believe I have some skills and some background in finance...but while recently looking for a job, I sent a resume to like 40 potentials employers and I got 2 replies - asking me to pay them $5000+ in order to get a job? On top of that i offered all these "firms" to work totally free in the beginning for they can test me and then their answer is like: "yeah...you can work for free...but why not pay me some cash - you have money right...with all these terms that you use" - these are the replies i am getting so far, losely translated.

Also...I am looking for a super low pay rate of like $15 hourly...I mean come on - even the slaves in the roman empire weren't asked to pay for their work. Also, here are some of my skills (copy/pasted from a cover letter i've written):

+ I have developed about 30 programs/scripts in C#, Mathematica, PHP and C++ to model different risk and management problems, including but not limited to: Derivatives pricing (options, bonds, swaps, futures, accruals, CMS, CDO, forwards, repos, MBS, CFDs, ASX listed CFDs, CDS, warrants, turbos, FX – others), risk management (kelly criterion, hedging, diversification, var), econometrics (sharpe ratio, sortino ratio, treynor ratio, beta, omega, kurtosis, skewness, variance, standard deviation, moments, CAPM), trading (quantitative analysis, fundamental analysis, pure arbitrage, statistical arbitrage, neural networks, mispricings, high frequency trading, emerging markets).

+ I have devloped about 20 mathematical models, including - an extended version of Black-Scholes using the levy distribution instead of the normal one - which gives much better option pricing results and prediction, extending the kelly criterion from a one dimensional model to a
multidimensional which is of great use in the investing field, my own probability distribution designed for continous timing, my own PDEs.

+ I have an MBA from the university of Liverpool in international business + a few awards in mathematics and programming and finally -have worked a few months at the well known Swiss Bank: Julius Bar as well and in a top Hong Kong hedge fund.

it's just weird..and I think it will get worse...

anyway - 10x!
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Quote from sjfan:

Anyway, I'm sure you know a bit about a lot of these things. But the way you are phrasing them makes you sound like you are pretending to know more than you do. Perhaps that's the problem ? That's why I would pass on your resume.
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This is 2010, the worst job market since the great depression, if you feel like pretending to know something I say put it down on your resume or cover letter, in this world anything goes. This economy is so fucked up right now it doesn't matter what one writes on their resume when 5000 are applying for 8 open positions.
 
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