Talking Tuesdays with Fancy Quant

Jonathon Emerick is an energy trader and quant who also has a YouTube channel (QuantPy). We discuss his journey coming from chemical engineering to quantitative finance which included a Masters of Financial Mathematics. Topics covered in our discussion range from energy markets to risk management to YouTube and day trading.

Jonathon Emerick:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-emerick-407224119/
https://www.youtube.com/@QuantPy

Since I just turned 35 years old, I figured I would a podcast episode on the journey and the lessons I learned. It was a mixed bag of great years, some struggles, and now coming out the other side. Quantitative finance is a wild ride and never the same for any two professionals.


Reflecting on 30 Years: The Journey to Becoming a Quant
https://youtu.be/rGdfR66Dl4c?si=4A4hWtK8uP3KJQSB

As many of you know I work in a high paying field and rub shoulders with many wealthy people. That being said, I didn't grow up around Wall Street or any other high powered field. I was an average American who took an interest in quantitative finance and ended up falling in love with statistics and economics. I tend to understand people from a variety of backgrounds because I wasn't sheltered in one group. This perspective has allowed me to understand some of the biggest issues America faces however it is very frustrating sitting in the middle. No one wants to be in the middle anymore as the rise of the internet has made it so easy to segregate people based off of race, religion, social status, wealth, politics, and many other random groups.

We need to come together as a nation and embrace what makes America unique. The values of capitalism, family, freedom, and hard work seem to have become taboo as the new "acceptance of everyone" mentality continues. There is right and there is wrong but there is also a need for deeper discussions and debates on topics.

Should you have friends at work?

Of course! You need a network around you. You need people to talk to who can relate to you. It makes work easier as you understand your colleagues better, it helps find work in the future, and it makes it enjoyable to go to work.

That being said, I rarely ever hang out with my colleagues outside of work. However I do grab lunch with past colleagues and my Santander friends did all text and call congratulating me on my new daughter.


Website:
https://www.FancyQuantNation.com

Support:
https://ko-fi.com/fancyquant

Quant t-shirts, mugs, and hoodies:
https://www.teespring.com/stores/fancy-quant

Connect with me:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitri-bianco
https://twitter.com/DimitriBianco

A subscriber asked how I paid for my masters degree as they are very expensive. The short answer on how I paid for it was working part-time and taking out government loans. For my undergrad my parent's paid the first 1.5 years and then I got married and was poor so the school covered my tuition. I also worked two part-time jobs during my undergrad to pay for rent, books, food, and other necessities. I would recommend students really focus on their school work when possible however if you can't afford school, you need to work.

A subscriber asked how I manage my family, working as a quant, two YouTube channels, and a fair amount of hobbies including my homestead. There are really four tips that allow me to manage my schedule. It is also important to realize I do not succeed at everything. Social media makes it look like everything is running smooth with minimal stress however my life can be very stressful however I find the rewards from juggling so many thing worth the effort. So here are me four tips:

1) Repetition
2) Paper Planner
3) Advanced Prioritization
4) Perspective

An industry professional asked me why is it so hard to get changes made within a company. They had made some suggestions for improving model validation however they were told there were resource constraints. Resource constraints are very real however this often includes company politics. For example, even if your team can make changes that will improve efficiency, save money, and great better outcomes it will disrupt other teams. As a manager or department head you now have to convince other departs to make the changes which will cost them and money. This impacts company and team performance in the short-run which impacts their bonuses. It is also important to realize that many projects and changes will fail. Failures cost more time and money which is also a consideration.

As advice, ask yourself, am I willing to lose my job over this change? If the answer is yes, then push for the change really hard. If the change is needed but not critical you might consider just waiting and asking later down the road. Resources could change or people could move jobs making the request easier.

In quantitative finance I hear a lot of students say, "I love money" implying that will make them good at quant finance. It is a very shallow statement and one that shows the student hasn't thought much about that statement. The students that do truly love money for the sake of money are shallow people that won't make it in quant finance. Now that being said, I think many students making the statement either find economics interesting which covers how money transfers value, stores value, and how people create value. And or they love what money can do for them. Money can buy you things such as experiences, assets, or even provide financial freedom which is why people save or invest for retirement.

So before you tell someone you love money, think twice. Communicating why you would be a good fit for finance or quant finance has nothing to do with loving money. Those that excel at quant finance do so because they love stats, math, and understanding how the world works.

The biggest lie in quant finance is that you can do everything required at the highest level of a model. This includes data engineering, model development (quant research), implementation (quant dev), and be the end user (often a trader or operations team). This full stack quant does exist however they are never the best at everything and they often work in a very specific niche. Examples of a niche could be, auto loans, equity HFT, commodities, securitization, or etc. The systems, languages, math, stats, financial theory, and business uses are all different.

I would encourage people to focus on one main area (data engineer, quant, quant dev, or business user) and dig as deep as possible. There are a lot of topics inside of each of these and it is easier to jump around business types than to try and cover too many areas with non-overlapping skills. 

For this Thanksgiving season I would like to express my gratitude for my dad. My dad was a traveling salesman and the reason my mom was able to be a stay at home mom. The one skill that I am most grateful for is my work ethic. I learned to work along side my dad as a kid growing up. The example my dad set helped engrain in my the need and desire to work. I spent a lot of my childhood working on our house, cleaning cars, or traveling across the country for my dad's job.

As Thanksgiving is this week I wanted to reflect on my gratitude for my mom. My mom was a stay at home mom and was lucky enough to be able to stay home and spend a lot of time with me as a child. Many of the life lessons around manners, religion, and domestic skills such as cooking and cleaning all came from my mom. My mom's attitude towards education is also what kept me somewhat engaged as a child with school even though I did not like attending when I was a kid. Having kids of my own has also helped me realize the amount of time, effort, and pain it takes to raise kids. For these reasons I am very grateful for my mom and the effort she put into me.

Understanding performance reviews is challenging especially if you have not worked at a variety of firms. There will always be a human judgement portion which is not a hard science. That being said, reviews should be very specific to each position. When I moved from an individual contributor to a manager role, I was not happen that my annual review was average. Over the last 5 years I had always performed above average. What I didn't understand was that I was now being judged and reviewed as a manager. Did I build better models or conduct better validations than most of the team? Yes. Was I more productive? Yes! Did my employees improve on their performance? No. It was my job to perform individual contributor work well however it was now also my job to get my employees to increase their performance. As a team were were average. Managers are judged by team performance just as much as individual performance.

My best advice is to really look inward and figure out what you need to work on. This is always hard as we view ourselves differently than managers but this will help you become a better employee and person.

Many things make legends who they are. It seems the commonality is the ability to perform at a very high level over an extended period of time. Looking at Fischer Black, Peter Carr, Rick Rubin, George Box, Gilbert Strang, and John Nash it is interesting to see so many difference between them yet they have all had significant contributions to their area of expertise. Soft skills seem to play some part of this title of being a legend. There are many people who made one contribution but seem to have faded and forgotten.

For quants it seems one must contribute academic ideas as well as have some sort of unique difference that helps others. Peter Carr's legacy seems to be amplified by his generosity of time and ability to teach. I would argue the success of making money contributes very little to being a quant. Investors and traders are very different than quants.

Rick Rubin Interview (Joe Rogan):
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5oDyN0CFjEwClqjZxJQf9O

Gilbert Strang Interview (Lex Fridman):
https://youtu.be/lEZPfmGCEk0?si=G5K6HpS4LkftujCh

MIT Course - Gilbert Strang:
https://youtu.be/ZK3O402wf1c?si=m8QWrXTeVWVi086G

As grad school programs and undergrad programs are starting up it is important to get the most out of the time you are there. School seems like it goes slow however by the time you graduate and have been working a few years it seems like long ago.

1) Network with a wide range of students.
2)  Do informational interviews with alumni and industry practitioners to learn what specialty you want to work in after graduation.
3) Lean In! It is very challenging to balance the social aspects of grad school with the educational aspects. Focus more on learning and networking instead of optimizing your grades. Realize you will be graduating soon and will not have the same amount of time to really focus on your education. 

As a book review I give "Operation Paperclip" 5/5 stars! I'm not typically a big fan of popular paperback books (non textbooks).


The dilemma in the books shows a brief insight into some of the horrible killings and crimes as well as the potential or perceived need for the science to end WWII with Japan as well as fend of Russia (cold war). Determining who was of value was challenging and many of the crimes were swept under the rug. As someone who practices science it is understandable that we need break throughs especially when war is involved. However on the other hand the true Nazis needed to be held accountable.

Science funding fell off in the US and it seems to be negatively impacting progress in both the public and private sectors.


I meant Eric Weinstein not Bret Weinstein however they both have a similar stance. Eric states more of the details of the lack of funding historically.


My Life as a Quant:
https://amzn.to/3Kn3h9R (my affiliate link)

Eric Weinstein:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7MDxyrrhD7gC7XMRwB0ulv

Bret Weinstein:
https://youtu.be/pRCzZp1J0v0


Website:
https://www.FancyQuantNation.com

Support:
https://ko-fi.com/fancyquant

Quant t-shirts, mugs, and hoodies:
https://www.teespring.com/stores/fancy-quant

Connect with me:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitri-bianco
https://twitter.com/DimitriBianco

I met Christina Qi virtually at the Princeton Quant Conference in 2023. I was really impressed with her presentation on hedge funds, data, and career advice. I connected with her on LinkedIn and found her posts insightful as she explains a lot about what she is doing career-wise even when it isn't the trendy thing to do. I invited her as a guest on the podcast to learn more about her and her career. One of the best points she makes in this interview is the importance of work-life balance.

If you want a more complete picture of her background, check out her LinkedIn profile.

Christina's LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinaqi/

Data Bento:
https://databento.com/

The finance industry seems to be following the social movement of adding bias and personal opinions instead of allowing the invisible hand of capitalism to properly assign and balance resources and outcomes.

Consulting firms are now coming up with politically driven definitions of bias instead of using the mathematical definition and customers can choose their definitions. From a logical standpoint, choosing a definition is the opposite of non-bias. This approach of choosing your definition means models will be biased in the direction a firm wants even when the true data does not support it. This will have negative impacts in finance (fair lending practices), marketing campaigns (firms trying to push their narrative), and I'm sure other areas I can't think of.

The new mortgage proposal to redistribute wealth from financial responsible people to irresponsible people is another example of the push towards socialism and away from capitalism. This new rule reminds me of the 2007/2008 mortgage crisis in the sense that people are trying to get those not financially stable to buy houses they can't afford. I remember the logic that if the requirement to have a down payment on a house was removed, we would get the "historically unable to purchase a home" into houses. The not surprising result was that people who couldn't afford homes bought homes and then defaulted. This new rule will have similar results. You can't fake financial stability.

This past podcast season was a lot of fun and I got more interaction and ideas from listeners than ever before. The next season will be in the fall however I have not started planning yet. Let me know what your ideas are for an episode or season and I will try to work them into the next season.

If you have found these episodes helpful, please share them on Linked or Twitter. Or if you are on the podcast, write a review on one of the podcasting sites such as Apple Podcasts.

uKkoRNRYLVitlZSBbwFS

So I had a previous video many months ago answering a subscriber's question regarding conflict at work. They were concerned with a list of issues that were ethical in nature and how to handling it. They were a junior employee and wanted advice on what to do. My advice was to just look for a new job. A comment on that video stated that it was good to know finding a new job was the correct solution as there always seems to be a more complex solution that could be better.

I didn't mean for the video to come off as a black and white decision. So in this podcast I will discuss more on why conflict at work in complex (politics) and how standing for what you believe is another good approach however often you will have to roll over and deal with continued conflict for your decision to stand and fight. Many times in my career I have stood and fought for an issue. I won some but many ended up becoming complicated and I had to back down so as not to lose my job or create an undesirable workplace.

As this channel focuses on quantitative finance and risk management, I tend to focus on financial topics specific to the industry and not personal finance. Due to many requests over the years I will explain how I manage my personal finances.

I use a waterfall approach. I have a value selected for the maximum amount I need in my checking account. That amount is enough to cover my daily expenses such as rent, food, utilities, clothing, and typical splurges. You can determine this from a 12 month average of your spending. You need a positive cash flow to live life. Part of creating a positive cash flow is reducing unnecessary expenses such as streaming services, buying junk you only use once, and other luxury items that aren't needed to live. You can also invest (spend) money and time on improving your skills for your day job or career that you are working towards.

After you have some positive cash flow (extra cash beyond your daily living), I divide it into three accounts.

1) Retirement (401k, IRA, and other financial investments)
2) High Yield Savings Accounts
3) Paying Down Debt (extra payments towards principle)

I tend to put about a third in each however you can weight them however you want. The retirement investments are for your long-term well being. The high yield savings account is for your short-term well being. It can be used to pay for unexpected expenses, vacations, interesting investment opportunities, and MOST importantly it should be there as a safety net! Try to grow your high yield account as large as possible as it will generate income for you. Don't forget that if it gets near $250k, you should open another account at another institution so that all of your savings is protected by the FDIC. The final "account" is paying off your debt faster. Get out of debt! Debt is a risk in the sense you always have to make a payment regardless of your employment status. You also pay extra in interest to use debt. By paying off your debt early you'll also increase your cash flow and financial stability.

****THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE****
This is just how I manage my financials.