Alumni Perspectives

Career decisions grounded in trading decisions

My background is very technical, but I have a real affinity for finance, so an MFE was the right fit. 

At Squarepoint I learned a lot about how to execute trading decisions systematically, but I want my career to be more on the front desk, managing capital and being central in the decision-making process.

I’m looking forward to just that type of role with Walleye. Because it is a smaller firm, I will have more freedom to make my own decisions and be part of a close-knit team. 

An inside track on career opportunities

Because the Berkeley Haas MFE program is in a business school, the program has deep relationships all across the finance industry. 

Those relationships give us an inside track on many job opportunities, including positions that never show up on LinkedIn or elsewhere. 

I learned so much on the career trek to Chicago, where we visited three or four firms each day. Meeting with human resources, traders, and portfolio managers gave us a real feel for each firm. Plus, it was great to travel with my classmates and get to know each other. 

A real-world approach to teaching

The professors for the foundational classes like Stochastic Calculus and Statistics are PhDs with academic credentials in fields like physics. Later classes are more empirical and rely a lot on project-based learning. Those professors often come from industry and bring a real-world perspective to their teaching. 

Kevin Coldiron, for example, had his own hedge fund. He taught Dynamic Asset Pricing and is advising my team in the IAQF competition. We’re looking at the effect of the “Magnificent 7” stocks on market capitalization over the last four years. It is a topic that is very recent and very relevant. 

I really connected with several of my professors. Dmitry Livdan taught Derivatives, one of the hardest classes, but he did it while telling very funny stories. Everyone was invested in our development, generous with their time and their expertise.

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