+1
bchadwick Wrote:
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> First of all, I don’t think anyone gets a Ph.D. in
> Quant. There are Ph.Ds in math, physics,
> economics, finance, music, sociology, etc.. Some
> of these have more quantitative aspects than
> others.
>
> My Ph.D. is not in finance, so before I did L1 of
> the CFA program, I got a lot of questions saying,
> “Well, bchad, you’re obviously smart, but what do
> you know about finance.” Truth is, I knew some
> statistics, and a fair amount of economics, but
> I’d never navigated financial statements, and I
> wasn’t all that sure about all the different
> things that go into equity and fixed income
> valuation. I knew what options were, but not much
> else about derivatives.
>
> After passing L1, I never got the “so what do you
> know about finance” question again. I went on to
> do L2 and L3 because 1) might as well complete
> what you started, and 2) I was genuinely
> interested in the material, and 3) it helped to
> have a formal program that covered key issues in
> portfolio management without requiring that I go
> back and get another university degree.
>
> Also, there are lots of different ways to do
> statistics. The way a medical researcher uses
> statistics is different from the way an economist
> uses statistics is different from the way a policy
> maker uses statistics is different from the way a
> quantitative portfolio manager uses statistics.
> Yes, there are some similarities, and knowing one
> helps you move to the other, but it’s not as
> simple a jump as you’d think. Volatility
> clustering and ARCH/GARCH models are regression
> techniques, sure, but they are completely unique
> to finance, AFAIK. Portfolio optimization is
> fairly unique too.
>
> And in pretty much all statistical modeling, the
> best models are based on understanding theories of
> the underlying processes, and you need the CFA (or
> some other source) to give you a base in that.
>
> As for Harvard Ph.D. students being dismissive of
> CFA as rote learning, just realize that a Ph.D.
> grad student from pretty much anywhere is
> generally a somewhat bitter person. They’re
> usually poor students slaving away being told that
> they’re not really intellectually good enough to
> play with the big boys (and girls) and trying to
> justify every thought they have with some
> reference to existing literature. It’s a pretty
> degrading experience, one that often drags on for
> many years, so many tend to let off steam and
> justify their own plight by claiming that what
> they are doing is deeper, more meaningful, more
> profound than CFA or MBA programs that their
> competition is doing. There are certainly ways in
> which CFA and MBA can be considered “lighter” than
> Ph.D. work, but it’s also true that Ph.D. is
> overkill for most of life’s needs. I think you’ll
> find that Ph.Ds who have had their degrees for a
> while will not poo-hoo CFA and MBA so readily.