QUANTITATIVE FINANCE

This monograph aims to educate and inspire advanced undergraduate and MBA students to consider quantitative finance as a career path. The risk-return tradeoff articulated by Harry Markowitz and William Sharpe applies not only to stocks and portfolios, but also to career decisions. As a result, coursework in Financial Engineering, Investments, and Corporate Finance can substantially enhance lifetime earnings. The financial and statistical techniques introduced in this monograph-such as optimization, regression, and time-series analysis-are highly rewarded in today's marketplace, where industry seeks intelligent, diligent, and professional candidates with strong academic performance. Using robust-regression-based stock selection models, this monograph estimates and analyzes the resulting Efficient Frontiers over the 1997-2020 period using the WRDS database, and over the 1997-2022 period using commercially available databases. These applied methodologies are highly valued by leading financial institutions.