Traders at Berkeley

Introduction to Quantitative Finance

A student-led DeCal introducing applied quantitative finance to all UC Berkeley students.

A student-led DeCal · UC Berkeley

Course description

Quantitative Finance has a high barrier of entry with expertise in quantitative subjects required for a career. We hope to bridge the gap between industry expectations and the student's possible career choices by exposing them to a basic understanding of quantitative finance. Through units in economics, machine learning, and quantitative investing, students will learn the necessary skills to be familiarized with the industry, and we hope that this is an opportunity for students to develop their own quantitative intuition about the market.

This DeCal is offered as IEOR 198, previously known as STAT 198 and CS 198-134.

The DeCal runs each semester. Applications for the next offering are not open yet — the course meets weekly, and the first lecture is open to all; subsequent lectures are open to enrolled and auditing students only.

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Course materials

Course materials are posted on EdStem instead of the website for ease of use. Anyone (including those not taking the course) is welcome to join the Ed to view the materials. Communication is done primarily through Ed — contact staff there.

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Course at a glance

Prerequisites

None. Anyone with an interest in learning about quantitative finance is encouraged to apply.

Format

Meets once a week for two hours — roughly half lecture, half hands-on work — plus an hour of weekly office hours.

What we cover

Core intuitions for quantitative trading, then techniques for discovering and quantifying strategies, and finally building your own trading execution engine.

What you'll leave with

  • Understand vital discretionary trading intuitions
  • Navigate the modeling problems in quantitative finance
  • Build systematic trading software

Grading

This course will be graded on attendance, participation, weekly assignments, and a final project.

Participation and attendance — 40%
Students will have one excused absence for the semester. Attendance is extremely important to understand the course material and to stay on track. Every unexcused absence will result in a 10% reduction in the final grade.
Weekly assignments — 30%
There will be weekly assignments to test on practical applications of the course material for each week. Assignments will be a mix of content quizzes and applications of classroom concepts in Jupyter Notebooks. Assignments will be assigned during each class, and due the following week (Thursday) on Gradescope. Students will receive feedback on their assignments by Sunday midnight.
Coding project — 30%
This will be a cumulative final project that the student will work on for the entire semester. It will test students' knowledge and understanding by applying the course material to a real-live trading environment.
Pass / No Pass
In order to pass the course, you need at least 70%.