Programming Skills for Finance Career

[spider]

Short version: What computer languages are most valuable with respect to a finance career? VBA, Java, Perl, other?

Longer version: I have a background in applied stats (econ specifically). I am pretty decent w/ SAS, Stata, Fortran90. I also have done a little bit of Perl.

I am looking ahead to a possible career in finance most likely from a research or academic perspective. I may have some time in the near future to work on computer/programming skills and am wondering where would be a good place to focus.

I realize, of course, that I could end up somewhere such that I have to learn some specific language, and that can't be foreseen. What I am looking for are languages/skills that are pretty popular in finance today and ideally might also be useful in a broader sense (beyond finance).

Hope that makes sense, and thanks in advance.

[BradleyT]

When I programmed for the insurance industry it was all COBOL.

[edtost]

depends what type of job you wind up with:

VBA, MATLAB, C++
front office, quant, IT

[spider]

[ QUOTE ]
When I programmed for the insurance industry it was all COBOL.

[/ QUOTE ]

Geez, I am already embarrassed enough to admit I know fortran! [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[BradleyT]

LOL yeah.

This was in '97 and I got out of it in '99. It was good pay and all but COBOL + Mainframe = dead end. I did a lot of work on ROTH IRAs which had just come out and annuities which was cool I guess.

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
depends what type of job you wind up with:

VBA, MATLAB, C++
front office, quant, IT

[/ QUOTE ]

i just came from a headhunter and was told i'm "light on the programming" side of what they need.

i know matlab as a functionality but not user defined functions. i can write basic macros in excel.

top firms want new hires to be able to program at a high level (from the layman's perspective) and a low level (from a comp-sci programmer's perspective)

basically, you should be able to write a program in one of those languages that goes to bloomberg, gets data, inputs it into your model and updates the model.

you want it to be able to then trade on the outputs of that model.

Barron

[spider]

[ QUOTE ]
basically, you should be able to write a program in one of those languages that goes to bloomberg, gets data, inputs it into your model and updates the model.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, this is probably a more specific way of asking my question. So what languages will be best to learn for this or does it not really matter which one?

I am not personally afraid to tackle this stuff as I am actually a decent programmer (from a layman's point of view) -- it's just that my skills are in frickin Fortran/SAS/Stata.

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
basically, you should be able to write a program in one of those languages that goes to bloomberg, gets data, inputs it into your model and updates the model.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, this is probably a more specific way of asking my question. So what languages will be best to learn for this or does it not really matter which one?

I am not personally afraid to tackle this stuff as I am actually a decent programmer (from a layman's point of view) -- it's just that my skills are in frickin Fortran/SAS/Stata.

[/ QUOTE ]

lol. i don't know..but i'd like to find out just as much as you.

Barron

[quant_trader]

In the old days SAS, now probably mix of SAS and Matlab shops are out. Also, knowing C++ and Perl always helps.

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
In the old days SAS, now probably mix of SAS and Matlab shops are out. Also, knowing C++ and Perl always helps.

[/ QUOTE ]

do you have experience creating trading strategies that are automated w/ real time data (i.e. goes to data sources to get prices/reports and bring them into a model & then generate positions) and then produce return streams that are testable?

if so, how do you do it, step by step if possible.
thanks a ton,
Barron