Our featured guest is Dr. Yves Hilpisch, founder of The Python Quants (TPQ).
TPQ has developed platforms and analytics libraries, frequently hosts meet-ups and workshops, and often contracts to exchanges, banks and hedge funds for custom Python development. In short, they do a lot of good for those involved in quantitative finance.
Hilpisch has been published three times already, with his most notable work likely being “Python for Finance” through O’Reilly. On top of his authorship, Hilpisch regularly lectures at Universities, as well as presents and speaks on the subject of quant finance at events.
Over the next hour, we unpack a ton of subjects related to being a quant and why programming in Python is a useful skill to have in your toolbox.
What’s Covered in This Interview:
- If you’re new to quantitative financing, Hilpisch explains what it means to be a “quant” and the different way one tries to make sense of markets.
- A brief look back in history at applying quantitative methods to finance, as well as how a present day quant looks for opportunities and exploits the market.
- The potential value of social sentiment data and effectiveness of machine learning (plus similar techniques)
- Hilpisch’s motives to start The Python Quants many years ago and what happens at the events and meet-ups hosted in various countries.
- Python’s overall popularity and why it’s Hilpisch’s preferred choice in programming languages for financial applications.
- Hilpisch’s paramount example for open-sourced code and collaboration is Pandas, a Python library created by a programmer based out of a large hedge fund.
- The type of commitment to become proficient in Python, a sensible way for non-programmers to learn how to code in Python, and educational resources to get you up to speed.
Links and Resources:
- Python for Finance: Analyze Big Financial Data by Yves Hilpisch – Full of examples of how to use Python in quant finance.
- Derivatives Analytics with Python by Yves Hilpisch – This work shows the powerhouse capabilities of Python in options analytics and hedging.
- TPQ.io – Everything you could want to know about The Python Quants is available here, as well as educational material, training, browser-based analytics platforms, and more.
- Hilpisch.com – This is where you can find Hilpisch’s Jupyter Notebooks (code), projects, presentations, and anything else you wanted to know about him.
- @DYJH – Be sure to follow Hilpisch on Twitter and let him know your thoughts on this episode.
- Chat With Traders Survey – Please take two minutes to take part in the Chat With Traders survey and help support this free podcast.
