Part of my childhood memory was listening to my father’s conversations with his clients in his office at a local bank. The numbers, equations and technical terms which I had absolutely no clue of were my  first exposure to the world of finance. Trying to follow my father’s footsteps, I chose to major in Financial Statistics as an undergraduate student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

As a senior at CUHK Shenzhen, my education, research, and internship experience in the field of Financial Statistics has enabled me to understand that future financial markets, whether commodities, equities or currency, will depend heavily on innovative algorithms and statistical models executed by computer programs for value creation. This realization has sparked my desire to pursue a more rigorous education, specifically a master’s degree in Financial Engineering at the Tandon School of Engineering at NYU.

The undergraduate training has provided me with a solid foundation in financial investments, statistical analysis, and the use of programming languages such as R, Python and MATLAB. Beyond coursework,  I worked on research projects, where I implemented the knowledge I had learnt, and moreover, explored areas not covered in lectures. I taught myself how to use Python to document and analyze the daily trading volumes in the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock indices when working with Prof. Jinfan Zhang  on Quantitative Research in Chinese Market. Collaborating with a classmate to work on Relationship Between Stock Price Volatility and Liquidity in Chinese Stock Market, using the regression model I constructed and the Wind data from 2000 to 2015, we discovered a positive relationship between these two factors based on daily data from Chinese stock market, which challenges almost all existing studies  that report otherwise. We are currently preparing the paper to submit to a top financial journal in China.

Trying to figure out how theoretical knowledge can be implemented in practice, I obtained an internship as a credit risk analyst in the Fixed Income Division at China Merchant Security in Shenzhen. At the beginning, I was struggling among terms like “fixed income” and “credit risk of bond”. Going over 70 reports regarding defaulted bonds and credit ratings helped me regain confidence and independently compose credit-rating reports. By the end of my internship, I have now completed 100 of them.

However, these experiences have made me realize that a more rigorous education is called for to prepare me to become a successful analyst, and exposure to a more diversified learning environment is needed  as most business operations are no longer domestic only. The training in logical thinking, analytical reasoning and decision making at Tandon School will prepare me for business analyst jobs in investment and commercial banks, trading companies or hedge funds in New York after graduation. I am particularly excited about courses such as Extreme Risk Analytics and Quantitative Methods in Finance, which I believe will lay the foundation for understanding the application of advanced analytic  techniques to solve real-world problems. More specifically, analytical tools taught in these classes will be extremely helpful for me when facing practical problems such as derivative securities valuation and quantitative trading. Just as importantly, the Finance and Risk Engineering Department provides Pre-Program Boot Camp, Career Guidance and Weekly Seminars with industry practitioners, which will be an invaluable opportunity for me to constantly update my skills in the field of Financial Engineering and receive input from the industry. It is my firm belief that the challenges, rigorous study, and intellectual growth that I will experience at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering will prepare me to be a successful quantitative analyst in the digital era.