Quantitative trading/research - fixed income vs commodities
Hi,
I am looking for some advice/opinion to guide me on a decision with regards to my next role. I am going to move jobs and I currently have two offers, both in global macro quantitative research. One offer is within commodities (term structure modelling) and the other is within fixed income (yield curve modelling). I'd be very interested to hear your advice for what direction you would go in. I have experience in both fields - I've spent 5 years in major CTAs and I've spent the last 3 years in fixed income quant research at a bank.
The guy heading the commodities team at the new role seamed very knowledgeable in commodities so I'll have a mentor to guide me. The guy heading the fixed income is a bit of a generalist and doesn't have deep fixed income knowledge but the firm has a lot of fixed income expertise and it seems I'll find support from someone if I need it.
Personally, I am currently leaning towards the Fixed Income yield curve modelling role. The biggest reason probably is the current environment - the yield curve has become the hottest topic in finance and the next few years might be interesting. The same can be said for commodities though but I am put off by the field because when I worked in CTAs, research was quite boring. Unfortunately, I don't have experience in Fixed Income trading which might be equally or even more boring than commodities? I've also not come across many quant funds that do quantitative fixed income.
One worry, however, that I have is that the fixed income markets are far more distributed/fragmented, far less standardized, far higher proportion is voice rather than electronic trading. This might become a nightmare for doing quantitative research and might be a killer for trading. Whereas with commodities, I know my way around, I know the data, I know where to get it, how to process it etc, with fixed income, I am far less experienced. But then again, the fact that fixed income is hard to trade quantitatively can also be a positive - less competition, more alpha.
Any thoughts would be very welcome and appreciated.
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