College degree, not really worth it

So I've been doing some work at a prop trading firm here in Auckland, dealing with mostly Asian index futures. There's some pretty cool folks at the firm, and the IT equipment is "hardcore" enough to pull off some of my strategies where optimal return comes from low-latency execution.

But what's really bothering me is the fact that 100% of what I do to make $$ these days requires skills that I could've gotten off a few books at the local bookshop and maybe a year or two of practical experience, all for $500~ tops! Yet, I've already paid over $100k in tuition for this Bachelor of Honours degree.

Sure, some people would say that "well it's a good piece of paper, it gets you a job interview (if your personal ventures fail miserably)". Still, there're plenty of people like me sitting on the employer side who KNOW that a university degree simply means one can show up on time and maybe type up a neat little report every half year or so, without any practical experience or ability to think critically.

So yeah, is it really worth it? I'd say not.

Smaller class advantages

Sometimes higher rated schools do not necessary guarantee satisfying college/university lives. Due to smaller classes, the administration folks at School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences, AUT, have provided personalized and productive experiences for everyone.


Interaction and enthusiasm

It allows students to interact much more freely and timely with each other, and the professors. This means more active participation, no more one-sided lecture and furious note taking drills. Reducing boredom, the whole learning thing becomes that much easier.


Social perks

Due to the frequent dialogues between students and professors, everyone has a better chance at making new friends and connections. Having friends in the school administration means timely scholarship application information, potential course changes, and maybe even casual campus or outside job offers. It is all quite rewarding.


Higher marketing spending does not mean better experience

I have met some people who had attended Auckland University, and found the experience unsatisfying, largely due to packed classrooms, tedious lectures, having little direct contact with professors, and etc. Sure, some schools have awesome reputation and it means little if they offer nothing but dry, mind-numbing talks.

Unconventional as it sounds, schools with smaller enrollees could present better learning experiences because the management (potentially caring) folks are capable of taking things from a ground up level. Instead of some statistic at a massive university, it feels nice to study at a smaller campus, and treated as a unique individual.

Impressive Financial Forecasting with SVR

A couple of researchers (Li, Hu, and Hirosawa) have displayed pretty interesting findings forecasting the USD/JPY exchange rate via a Support Vector Regression (SVR) network. The file explains the details. Let's break down what they did and accuracy results from the empirical test.

Basic idea of SVR: Nonlinear mapping of data into a high dimensional feature space with a kernel function, then do a linear regression in the transformed space. It all results in a nonlinear regression in low dimensional space.

Inputs of their study:

f(t): Historical USD/JPY exchange rate

F(t): Historical USD/EUR exchange rate

N(t): Historical NIKKEI 225 stock index value

O(t): Historical oil price in USD

Predicted Value (Output): USD/JPY exchange rate at the next day (t+1), next week (t+5), and 2 weeks from now (t+10)

Prediction evaluation tools:

Sum of Square Error (SSE)

Mean Absolute Error (MAE)

SSE and MAE measure deviation between actual and forecasted values, so the smaller the better the accuracy of forecasts.I find the MAE more practical of course since it isn't squared.

Correct Up Trend (CP)

Correct Down Trend (CD)

CP and CD basically gives the probability of forecast being correct for the next-day USD/JPY direction. So higher is better.

The results compared those of conventional SVR models and SVR network:

USD/JPY	Stat	SVR	SVR N
f(t+1)	sse	47.3925	36.2098
	mae	0.1672	0.1471
	cp	76.8116	77.8468
	cd	79.4118	79.8039
f(t+5)	sse	60.5918	38.4611
	mae	0.1877	0.152
	cp	76.7635	79.668
	cd	78.3465	79.3307
f(t+10)	sse	71.5295	39.7972
	mae	0.2052	0.1544
	cp	77.453	80.167
	cd	78.937	79.9213

So we can see that this is impressive for both SVR and especially the SVR Network. Directionally it's correct close to 80% of the time and an average error of within 0.15 Yen (with respect to daily range), for all three time frame predictions.

A lot of people don't look at this stuff because it takes a lot of thinking, so they convince themselves that it "doesn't work anyway". Well I'm here to tell you that IT DOES.