Quantitative analysis

You spend a summer building statistical and machine learning models that look for trading opportunities, on a desk at a firm that trades its own money. The seat is a Quantitative Research Intern. The research teams work on trades that do not depend on being the fastest to react, and on strategies using derivatives, which are contracts whose value comes from something else such as a share or an interest rate, across several asset classes and regions.

You are placed on either a systematic equity trading desk, where computers trade shares by rules, or a fixed income options desk, where the team trades options on bonds and interest rates. Each intern gets one project, advised by a trader, so the summer is organised around a single piece of research that you take from an idea to a tested model.