Dear Cohort 5 MSQF students,

Congratulations on your accomplishments in the program. Although I did not teach everyone but I know that everyone of you has worked very hard and you surely deserve the celebration of the degree.

First of all, I must apologize that I cannot attend your graduation ceremony (first time I ever miss it) due to an invited talk in Korea.

QF is a hard profession. Without enthusiasm and passion, it is not possible to complete the degree, let alone to succeed in the profession. After the crisis, many criticize Wall Street as a place filled with greed. True, there are greedy people in Wall Street. But so are other places. In my view, Wall Street is a place full of dedicated, passionate, devoted, and most importantly hard working people.

I always say that there are only a few 90-hour week jobs. They are residents, accountants and lawyers before they get their licenses, and Wall Street professionals. If you calculate the hourly rate, Wall Street professionals (not those greedy ones) make less than my daughter’s interning at Merck.

We are in a difficult time now. Wall Street pay has come down by 30 to 40%. Wall Street professionals work even harder and make even less hourly rate. Many people leave. Many high school and college graduates no longer look at Wall Street for their dreamed jobs. But this is a best time to test your passion toward quantitative finance. Are you here because you like it? Or are you here for the money.

QF is an area where math, stat, chemistry, physics, and engineering can all come together and help provide funding to manufacturers. Yes, we are helping manufacturers. We are not greedy bastards but we are providing values to real economic growth. We are here because so called the Main Street (i.e. manufacturers) need to produce real goods efficiently and to do that they need to borrow funds. Various innovations on Wall Street (such as IRS and CDS) help manufacturers borrow at the lowest costs possible. This function is invaluable. Without Wall Street innovations, manufacturers can only borrow through equity and bonds which are both very costly. Without QF, it is safe to say that our GDP growth will slow down by quite a lot. No body has put a number on it, but my guess is at least 10~20%.

Unfortunately, Wall Street due to nearly 20 years of prosperity, forgot its main mission and got itself so deeply in the game of creating fictitious profits and ripped off the real economy. A group of very few people got ridiculously rich and provided no productivity and the rest of the industry now bears the bitter fruits of these people. Quite much of the reason why we ended up with such a painful situation of course is de-regulation. So many people now are talking about tighter regulation and other many are worried of over regulation. This is an area of no consensus so I will not get into that. My advise to you is that we, Wall Street professionals, should continue to provide add-value. We should continue to innovate. We must help the Main Street run their businesses more efficiently so that we could have real economic growth.

Today, having this opportunity to say a few words to you upon your graduation, thanks to Bingnan who interviewed me and his classmates, I hope you continue to have passion toward this profession – as much passion as I have. Think big and see far. Be humble and work hard. Of course, no one minds being paid well. So at the end, I wish each of you all be very successful in your job search and career.

CONGRATULATIONS, CLASS OF 2012, COHORT OF 5!