Since I started my job with the law firm, I found it's extremely challenging to find time for reading. Bookstore used to be my favorite place on the earth. Recently, I decided to pick my reading up, and try to spend at least an afternoon or two at Barn & Nobles every week. I figured out it doesn't really matter what I read, since there is no certain topic proved to be more "useful" to others. So I told myself I would just walk by the shelves and pick up whatever I feel like reading.

Pick of the day is "My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance" by Emanuel Derman. I remembered it got mentioned a lot on MIT quant panel. Although obviously many quant are ex-physicists, mathematicians, I do expect that a successful quant who had worked in the field for 20 more years would at least sound like a banker or finance expert. It's like our PhD partners, after practicing law for some 10 years, would sound only like a lawyer. Well, but Derman is still a pure physicist, at least that's what his book is telling. He started from Newton, Maxwell, to Heisenberg, Einstein. To him, financial engineering is really just a new branch of physics, physics in a money context. Money, is essentially numbers, and in that sense, it makes no difference from numerical observations of any other systems. Behind those numbers, are people's hunger to understand the theory governing it, and further the ability to predict. I wonder maybe remaining a fan of science and exercising the scientific attitude made Derman one of the most successful POWs (physicist on wall street). Many people jumping into Quant nowadays with the hope to getting away from science. Ironically, they are only jumping from one branch to another branch, where survival depends on almost the same skill set. Black-Scholes model, though not as profound as Maxwell equations, uncertainty principle, and theories of relativity, is just another successful physics tool to explain and predict numbers. It just happens to deal with money, and all of a sudden, it looks like special.

Derman is such a nerdy but interesting guy. The key of his success is not how much he earns on the street, but really how much he enjoys science. I had an interesting finding. Pioneers are usually attracted to a field by interest, but then people that follow are attracted more by the paths the pioneers establish and the happy land they find. As Derman put in the book: ambition is you never satisfy with the present.