tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90765228870047372122024-02-20T16:07:50.075-08:00Mathematical Finance in the MediaPaul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-25250667139328862772009-01-04T21:14:00.000-08:002009-01-04T21:23:50.756-08:00The End of the Financial World as We Know ItMichael Lewis and David Einhorn<br />New York Times<br />January 3, 2009<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics have been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing. They watched our investment bankers and emulated them: for a long time now half the planet’s college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall Street.<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04lewiseinhorn.html">Full article</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-53531791160719215852009-01-04T21:17:00.000-08:002009-01-04T21:23:22.369-08:00How to Repair a Broken Financial WorldMichael Lewis and David Einhorn<br />New York Times<br />January 3, 2009<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr. Paulson must have had some reason for doing what he did. No doubt he still believes that without all this frantic activity we’d be far worse off than we are now. All we know for sure, however, is that the Treasury’s heroic deal-making has had little effect on what it claims is the problem at hand: the collapse of confidence in the companies atop our financial system.<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/How%20to%20Repair%20a%20Broken%20Financial%20World">Full article</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-62831171770370639662009-01-04T21:19:00.000-08:002009-01-04T21:22:57.913-08:00Risk MismanagementJoe Nocera<br />New York Times<br />January 2, 2009<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">THERE AREN’T MANY widely told anecdotes about the current financial crisis, at least not yet, but there’s one that made the rounds in 2007, back when the big investment banks were first starting to write down billions of dollars in mortgage-backed derivatives and other so-called toxic securities. This was well before Bear Stearns collapsed, before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the federal government, before Lehman fell and Merrill Lynch was sold and A.I.G. saved, before the $700 billion bailout bill was rushed into law. Before, that is, it became obvious that the risks taken by the largest banks and investment firms in the United States — and, indeed, in much of the Western world — were so excessive and foolhardy that they threatened to bring down the financial system itself. On the contrary: this was back when the major investment firms were still assuring investors that all was well, these little speed bumps notwithstanding — assurances based, in part, on their fantastically complex mathematical models for measuring the risk in their various portfolios.<br /></div><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html"><br />Full article</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-51123250943713643912008-11-24T06:00:00.000-08:002008-11-24T06:03:03.216-08:00Kiyoshi Ito, 93, Mathematician Who Described Random Motion, DiesSteve Lohr<br />New York Times<br />November 23, 2008<br /><br /><br />Kiyoshi Ito, a mathematician whose innovative models of random motion are used today in fields as diverse as finance and biology, died Nov. 17 at a hospital in Kyoto, Japan. He was 93.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/business/24ito.html">Full article</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-58500961643869977142008-11-23T10:49:00.000-08:002008-11-23T10:53:15.417-08:00Citigroup Saw No Red Flags Even as It Made Bolder BetsEric Dash and Julie Creswell<br />New York Times<br />November 22, 2008<br /><br />“Our job is to set a tone at the top to incent people to do the right thing and to set up safety nets to catch people who make mistakes or do the wrong thing and correct those as quickly as possible. And it is working. It is working.”<br /><br />Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup’s chief executive, in 2006<br /><br />In September 2007, with Wall Street confronting a crisis caused by too many souring mortgages, Citigroup executives gathered in a wood-paneled library to assess their own well-being.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/business/23citi.html">Full article</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-2909328276102057752008-11-18T06:03:00.000-08:002008-11-18T06:06:35.937-08:00What Crisis? Some Hedge Funds Gain<div style="text-align: justify;">Louise Story<br />New York Times<br />November 9, 2008<br /><br />Bernard V. Drury is a rarity on Wall Street: a hedge fund manager who is making money rather than losing it. While most hedge funds are sinking into red this year and unsettling the markets in the process, a handful of them are posting spectacular gains. Mr. Drury’s fund, for instance, is up 60 percent since Jan. 1.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/economy/10hedge.html">Full article</a> ...<br /></div>Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-74978884565648471672008-11-14T06:02:00.000-08:002008-11-14T06:03:16.642-08:00Credit Crisis — The EssentialsNew York Times | Business<br /><br />Times Topics - series of articles and latest developments.<br /><br /><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_crisis/index.html">Full article</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-51596961863960420492008-11-14T05:19:00.000-08:002008-11-14T05:20:41.996-08:0010 Weeks of Financial TurmoilNew York Times | Business<br />September 27, 2008<br /><br />A look at the recent events that shook the world's financial system.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/27/business/economy/20080927_WEEKS_TIMELINE.html">Video</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-43940614725475888332008-11-09T12:43:00.000-08:002008-11-14T05:06:59.926-08:00Fortune Seen as Fate: Quant Jobs After the Credit CrunchDominic Connor<br />Wilmott<br />October 22, 2008<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">My firm, P&D Quant recruitment has just taken on two more people to help with the increasing workload. A year ago this would haven a bland piece of corporate puff of so little interest that we'd probably not even have bothered telling anyone. But in today's market, it has caused more than one person to express at least some surprise. So have we completely lost our minds?<br /></div><a href="http://www.wilmott.com/detail.cfm?articleID=293"><br />Full article</a> (free account required)Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-68662613327259908692008-11-12T06:16:00.000-08:002008-11-14T05:06:41.748-08:00Keep It in VegasThomas Friedman<br />New York Times<br />September 16, 2008<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Watching some financial stocks just get wiped out in recent months, I often hear a voice in the back of my head, and it is the same voice as one of those dealers in Las Vegas who coolly tells you as he sweeps up your chips after you’ve busted in blackjack: “Thank you for playing, ladies and gentlemen.”<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/opinion/17friedman.html">Full article</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-73065481621484665612008-11-12T06:36:00.000-08:002008-11-14T05:06:24.628-08:00365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy<span class="text"><span id="ctl00_Content_Body_lblDescription">Ira Glass<br />This American Life / NPR<br />October 3, 2008<br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="text"><span id="ctl00_Content_Body_lblDescription">Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson—the two guys who reported our <a href="http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355">Giant Pool of Money</a> episode—are back, in collaboration with the <a href="http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=94411890" target="_blank">Planet Money podcast.</a> They'll explain what happened this week, including what regulators could've done to prevent this financial crisis from happening in the first place. You can learn more about the daily ins and outs and <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95395712" target="_blank">join the discussion</a> on the <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/" target="_blank">Planet Money blog</a>.</span></span><br /></div><span class="text"><span id="ctl00_Content_Body_lblDescription"><br /><a href="http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1263">Audio</a> ...<br /></span></span>Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-20910198656225444672008-11-14T05:04:00.000-08:002008-11-14T05:06:07.736-08:00Hedge Fund Managers Ask for a Few New RulesLouise Story<br />New York Times<br />November 13, 2008<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">WASHINGTON — A House of Representatives committee room was transformed into a club for billionaires for a few hours on Thursday, as five of the richest men in the world testified on the role of hedge funds in financial markets.<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/business/14hedge.html">Full article</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-53906530961901682722008-11-12T06:21:00.000-08:002008-11-12T06:27:33.484-08:00Wall Street's Shadow Market60 Minutes CBS TV Program<br />Sunday, October 5, 2008<br /><br />The program includes provocative remarks about the mathematicians who design the mortgage backed derivative securities.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4502673n">Video</a> ...Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-83974379492533857232008-11-09T11:46:00.000-08:002008-11-09T12:25:58.080-08:00In Modeling Risk, the Human Factor Was Left OutSteve Lohr<br />New York Times<br />November 4, 2008<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Today’s economic turmoil, it seems, is an implicit indictment of the arcane field of financial engineering — a blend of mathematics, statistics and computing. Its practitioners devised not only the exotic, mortgage-backed securities that proved so troublesome, but also the mathematical models of risk that suggested these securities were safe.<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/business/05risk.html">Full article</a>Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-83225427183996102002008-11-09T12:17:00.000-08:002008-11-09T12:25:40.592-08:00How the Thundering Herd Faltered and FellGretchen Morgenson<br />New York Times<br />November 8, 2008<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">THERE were high-fives all around Merrill Lynch headquarters in Lower Manhattan as 2006 drew to a close. The firm’s performance was breathtaking; revenue and earnings had soared, and its shares were up 40 percent for the year.<br /><br />And Merrill’s decision to invest heavily in the mortgage industry was paying off handsomely. So handsomely, in fact, that on Dec. 30 that year, it essentially doubled down by paying $1.3 billion for First Franklin, a lender specializing in risky mortgages.<br /><br />The deal would provide Merrill with even more loans for one of its lucrative assembly lines, an operation that bundled and repackaged mortgages so they could be resold to other investors.<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/business/09magic.html">Full article</a>Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-51215726307446303422008-11-09T12:22:00.000-08:002008-11-09T12:25:25.175-08:00Behind Insurer’s Crisis, Blind Eye to a Web of RiskGretchen Morgenson<br />New York Times<br />September 27, 2008<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Two weeks ago, the nation’s most powerful regulators and bankers huddled in the Lower Manhattan fortress that is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, desperately trying to stave off disaster.<br /><br />As the group, led by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., pondered the collapse of one of America’s oldest investment banks, Lehman Brothers, a more dangerous threat emerged: American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, was teetering. A.I.G. needed billions of dollars to right itself and had suddenly begged for help.<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/business/28melt.html">Full article</a>Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-52864211312311705582008-11-09T11:49:00.000-08:002008-11-09T12:25:13.466-08:00Don't Blame The QuantsSteven Shreve<br />Forbes<br />October 8, 2008<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Financial markets are a mess, and the excesses of the finance industry are dragging down the whole economy. In recent years, safe investments delivered unusually low returns, and hordes of investors seeking to be above average (as Garrison Keillor would say) bought extremely complicated instruments.<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/07/securities-quants-models-oped-cx_ss_1008shreve.html">Full article</a>Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9076522887004737212.post-60532741415902845192008-11-09T12:06:00.000-08:002008-11-09T12:24:46.417-08:00The Top 10 Quant Schools, According to the StreetCristina McEachern<br />Advanced Trading Magazine<br />July 21, 2008<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Quantitative analysts are in high demand on Wall Street as electronic trading and the use of complex algorithms to access liquidity continue to proliferate. While in the past quants often have been Ph.D.s in the academic world before crossing over to the Street, today there are more and more programs geared specifically toward preparing quants for financial services jobs. These programs typically offer a Master in Financial Engineering (M.F.E.) degree, but many offer similar degrees, including a Master of Science in Financial Engineering (M.S.F.E.), a Master of Science in Financial Math (M.S.F.M.), a Master of Science of Mathematics in Finance (M.S.M.F.) and a Master in Mathematical Finance (M.M.F.).<br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.advancedtrading.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=T3M03G2YPODH0QSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=209102204">Full article</a>Paul Feehanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15542194710609931467noreply@blogger.com0