Wolfram and Kurzweil are betting on opposite horses here. I work for Wolfram, but I'd be delighted if the ML-approach works. Personally, I think we need a diversity of approaches to really understand how to crack the nut of 'hard AI' (if that is even a sensible thing to pursue).
Quant trading is like anything - time and effort. You read a few sites, play with some data, read a few books, test and continually refine your strategies, learn more and brainstorm of new approaches. It can be pretty fun depending on who you are. But in the end I think enjoyment comes down to a love of problem solving, the difference with quant trading is it's financially self-sustainable and rewarding. Other projects lack the immediate pay-off, but take my word for it, will be more rewarding in the long run. Stick to your programming, your research, your show HN.
Also, the first cited site is Ernie Chan's which provides a similar established perspective
Having experienced all three, by working as a grad student, as well as in a quant fund and starting an internet/tech startup, I can say that I gained enjoyment from all of these roles.
Each experience presented interesting challenges. Quant trading was very mathematical, academically interesting and presented "big data" issues right at the start. Tech startups taught me a lot about management, getting things done (TM) and why you need to have a market BEFORE building a product! Academia taught me how to really analyse a problem to an extreme degree and how to quickly find solutions.
Right now I'm enjoying building quant trading systems. To a certain extent they can be fully automated (although you have to be aware of "alpha decay" - i.e. strategies losing their profitability over time) and thus it is possible to have other interests.
- Used to engage in a range of behaviors such as procrastination to keep a whole catalog of anxiety-producing thoughts tamped down and below the conscious mental radar screen. By now, the anxiety-producing thoughts have by and large come to the surface and evaporated, rendering those avoidance behaviors unnecessary.
For a couple years I practiced Bikram Yoga regularly, a practice I gradually found to overlap with mediation and led to my current involvement with a meditation group and development of my own practice.
A Dharma master spoke at my school and said we should strive to meditate for an hour twice a day. I'm up to roughly a half hour twice-a-day on my own, and 2 or 3 times a week I sit for an hour thirty with a group (three session of ~25min with walking/kin-kin in between, which really helps stretch out the legs). I've only stepped up my practice regularly, but after the group sessions generally end up feeling amazing, both exhausted and refreshed. The sleep, oh my god my sleep.
I'm a pretty busy thinker with a degree of anxiety as I've always been somewhat of a perfectionist with high-expectations of myself. Lots of internal pressure with a high caffeine intake. The benefits of a practice cannot be overestimated.
love it when a business professor analyzes why something like this game is so successful