Education
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As I am writing this post, I am very sure that what I know and layout here will be changing overtime as I will be incrementally (or logarithmically?) exposed to more of the finance industry. Nevertheless, it serves as a snapshot of my knowledge and values.
“Technical skills” in portfolio management practice refer to a variety of related skill sets which include (but by no mean are limited to):
- Financial modeling
- Data processing
- Statistical handling
- Matrix algebra automation
- Programming
- Database design and coding
I learned from my peers that C++, Visual Basic, MATLAB, Ox and Relational Database Design with SQL are widely used in the industry.
Why is programming and database here? After all, “financiers are business people, not technicians”.
Here are a few reasons I believe to justify the need of technical skills:
- Portfolio management requires constant portfolio construction and rebalancing. Different methods and models are employed in the process; huge and diversified data are required. The issue is data are usually scattered from different sources and one needs to be quick on the hands to process them to plug into models
- Customizations to Funds Management systems is costly and time-consuming. The cost does not only include actual fee charged by the software developer, but also involve opportunity cost (losing trading opportunities), communication cost, change management cost and business disruption cost. If you yourself can simply write a small application that solves your problem, most aforementioned costs are eliminated
- Large financial institutions house indoor IT support and development teams. However, this internal resource only limits the costs to some extend
- Graphing, charting and presentation creating are also paramount in writing analysis reports
- Existing models concentrate around large well-established markets, exchanges and asset classes. If you work with a new market (e.g. Vietnam), you need the technical skills to build your own model
A few programming techniques I have employed throughout my projects:
- Basic programming: data type handling, array handling (for matrix algebra), character handling
- Multi-dimensional loops and their optimization
- Search & sort algorithms
- Logic and discrete math
- Memory management, file management and database management
Nonetheless, technical skills make one category among a wide range of silos required from a Portfolio Manager. If you were to measure, how would your weight technical skills in your job?
In conclusion, this post outlines what I believe I know at the moment. What is your experience on this?
Finance
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I doubt the relationship is an exact parabola, but yeah, that’s the idea
- Change focus from doing (mega)deals to operations
- Focus on strengths i.e. printer
- Separated printer and PC businesses
- Cost saving
- Manage supply chain and turn Intel and AMD against each other
- Develop distribution network with retailers
Results
- Overtook Dell
- Shareholder value
- A smart deal with Palm
- HP with Plate is currently in best position against Apple in the tablet segment
Business
| amd, apple, corporate-governance, distribution, hewlett-packard, hp, intel, ipad, leadership, management, market, palm, pc, plate, printer, shareholder, supply-chain
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