The 21st Century Quant

Summary: The last decade has been pretty devastating for the financial industry. The 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath hit the financial industry hard. The financial industry is facing the new normalcy with meager margins, fewer opportunities with restrictions on high frequency trading and more scrutiny with a barrage of risk initiatives and regulations. Quants, the pioneers of the financial industry, are therefore seeking ways in which they can leverage their strengths and adapt to the new reality. On the other hand, the last decade has been great in terms of technology advances. The cloud is maturing, big data is no longer a buzz word, open source has caused tectonic shifts in the software landscape, AI and machine learning is finally seeing the day of light and fintech is changing the decades old status quo in the banking sector. There have been many new players and products in this space and financial industry has shown eagerness to learn and adopt many of the technology innovations in the quest of opportunities. In this talk, we will discuss the key innovations and discuss the landscape of 6 areas that the financial industry, and in particular, quants are looking into. We will discuss key tools, technologies, opportunities, challenges and the movers and shakers in these areas. This talk is targeted towards quants and data scientists who are intrigued and fascinated by various developments and would like to learn and adapt to the new realities of the 21st century.

Topics:

• Big Data : Opportunities for the financial industry

• Cloud computing : Are we there yet?

• Retooling the Quant: The Programming Language Wars

• Machine learning, AI, Deep Learning: Sifting the hype from reality

• Fintech: Bringing Silicon Valley to Wall Street

• Regulation and Risk : Accept, Optimize, Innovate