'Best' Physics degree for working in Financial sector

Smythe

If applying for employment in the Financial sector do you think employers would have a preference for either of the following degree titles? Or would they generally both be considered equal?

a) Physics with Astrophysics BSc
b) Physics BSc

Assuming both from the same university.

Thanks

srsly78

In London some of them are so fussy they insist on a 1st from oxford or cambridge. So course doesn't matter if you went to the wrong uni >.<

I have a physics degree and have done lots of work in finance - as a software engineer tho. Noone really cares about your course etc if you have the experience and skills. Sorry I know this is not much help to a graduate... I started as a normal software engineer, and only got into financial stuff recently.

I'd say whichever degree has the most mathematical content would be the best. Many courses even offer econometrics modules in the later years (TP in trinity does). Also learn everything you can about programming and excel

edit: Oh... funnily enough excel featured heavily in my course - we would use it for tabulating our lab results and performing analysis. There was never any training in it tho, we were just expected to figure it out pretty much.

freeze4real

Any of them will do.

Justin1982

I'd rate them in order of importance as:

Theoretical Physics
Computational Physics
Astrophysics
Physics

TP will give you a lot more progamming and mathematical background. TP's in Trinity also used to do final year programming based project. There was a few econophysics options available. I did a project in currency trading and it turned out to be vital in helping me get a degree in physics.
In TP we also did Econophysics course in Physics department. Think it was really only available to the TP's. We used to all laugh about it. Renamed it as Econo-faeces even. I didnt take it seriously and didnt attend lectures in it. Alas my job involves a lot of the material that was given in that course and I'm actually reading about it now 8 years later.

Computational and Astro physics all have a lot more programing content than Experimental Physics which makes them important in my eyes for anyone considering finance career later. Employers wont know the difference between all degrees but the skills you get from them will be different and will help in your career in finance to different degrees.

nesf

When I did Physics they recommended Astro to us for Finance and other fields because you would get a lot more experience working with very large datasets in Astro compared to Theoretical or Experimental without losing a whole lot in terms of mathematical exposure.

Economic models are usually sufficiently different to the kinds of models you come across in Physics that there's little difference in advantage between the different strands in Physics and it comes down more to your natural mathematical aptitude.

andrew

What's Econophysics?

Lbeard

nesf wrote: »

Economic models are usually sufficiently different to the kinds of models you come across in Physics that there's little difference in advantage between the different strands in Physics and it comes down more to your natural mathematical aptitude.

The thing of the moment in financial services for physics graduates is not economic modeling, it's quantitative trading. It uses the maths of thermodynamics.

It's this kind of thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes

A quick introduction would be Ed Thorp's "How to beat the market". Ed Thorp was a maths professor - the book isn't nonsense. This is effectively what hedge funds quant trading do. Though since everyone is at it, the margins have decreased since Thorp wrote his book.

There are a few technical books you can get your hands on that show all the maths. Some times it's referred to as portfolio theory. For all the hand waving, most of the time quants are just using spreadsheets. (The London whale lost 6 billion because of a spreadsheet error - Doh!!!).

nesf

Lbeard wrote: »

The thing of the moment in financial services for physics graduates is not economic modeling, it's quantitative trading. It uses the maths of thermodynamics.

It's this kind of thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes

A quick introduction would be Ed Thorp's "How to beat the market". Ed Thorp was a maths professor - the book isn't nonsense. This is effectively what hedge funds quant trading do. Though since everyone is at it, the margins have decreased since Thorp wrote his book.

There are a few technical books you can get your hands on that show all the maths. Some times it's referred to as portfolio theory. For all the hand waving, most of the time quants are just using spreadsheets. (The London whale lost 6 billion because of a spreadsheet error - Doh!!!).

Yeah, I've seen that stuff. I wasn't thinking of industry, more central banking when I came out of that. I'm not sure why.

Justin1982

andrew wrote: »

What's Econophysics?

Econophysics emerged out of the fact that a lot of Physicists, Theoretical Physicists and Mathematicians went into the area of Banking/Investment Funds/Finance and they probably make the best candidates for jobs in that industry that require model building using maths and programming.

A lot of physicists use mathematical models to simulate areas of physics so it was easy for them to move into modeling the financial world. A lot of business/finance/accountants/traders would not have got exposure to model building during their degree training or there would be a huge shortfall in numbers from those business disciplines who had those skills.

Econophysics is mainly obsessed with pricing models for complex financial securities like Credit Default Swaps, Options, Futures and Interest Rate Swaps.