A $16B hedge fund CIO explains what it takes to work at a hedge fund today

pulse

June 13, 2017 12:38 PM

Schonfeld Strategic Advisors' chief investment officer, Ryan Tolkin, explains what kind of skills are the most valuable when working at a hedge fund.

null

Schonfeld Strategic Advisors' chief investment officer, Ryan Tolkin, explains what kind of skill sets are the most valuable when it comes to working at a hedge fund. Following is a transcript of the video.

If you're thinking about getting a job at a hedge fund today, I think having strong statistical and analytical capabilities is probably the most important thing you can do. And then you need to figure out whether or not you have the technical capabilities that you want to be on the quantitative side of the business or on the discretionary side of the business, and I still think people on both sides can be successful.

Most of our quants have a computer-science background. They can code in either Python or C++. Whereas on thediscretionary side most of them come from a more traditional investment-banking background and are digging into 8-Ks and company fundamentals and being able to look at companies from a bottom-up perspective as compared to trying to use many different data sets to help predict the prices of stocks. Someone who's really analytical, someone who is competitive, someone who's hardworking, and, frankly, somebody who can challenge the people around them to work harder.

pulse