Postgraduate Prospectus

www.essex.ac.uk/ccfea | Computational Finance
development, in the area of financial
software engineering, for implementation
in an electronic market environment.
We introduce you to the information and
communication technology and automation
that underpins financial systems, and
you receive training on the structure,
instruments and institutional aspects of
financial markets, banking, payment and
settlement systems. We also have an option
for you to acquire training in quantitative
finance and our case study approach
will familiarise you with financial
software architecture.
Our MSc Financial Software Engineering
should interest you if you have a good first
degree in computer science or engineering,
or a BSc degree that provided a high level
of programming expertise such as C++
and/or .NET. Our training on software
engineering for large, dynamic and
automated financial systems and finance
models, plus the focus software design in
a number of real-world financial systems,
will enable you to be a leader in this field.
MSc High Frequency Finance
and Trading
On this course we equip you with the
core concepts and quantitative methods
in high frequency finance, along with the
operational skills to use state-of-the-art
computational methods for financial
modelling. We enable you to attain an
understanding of financial markets at
the level of individual trades occurring
over sub-millisecond timescales, and
apply this to the development of
real-time approaches to trading and
risk management. In addition to traditional
topics in financial econometrics and
market microstructure theory, we put
special emphasis on statistical and
computational methods for modelling
trading strategies and predictive services
that are deployed by hedge funds,
algorithmic trading groups, derivatives
desks, and risk management departments.
MSc High Frequency Finance and Trading
includes hands-on projects on topics such
as order book analysis, VWAP & TWAP,
pairs trading, statistical arbitrage, and
market impact functions. You have the
opportunity to study the use of financial
market simulators for stress testing trading
strategies, and designing electronic
trading platforms.
Research study
We offer you a vibrant research
environment. Our PhD students publish
papers in prestigious international
conferences and often attract the attention
of industry and government: one of our
PhD students was recently invited to
present their research on term structure
models to the Bank of England, while many
others get the opportunity to directly apply
their research through internships at
investment banks and hedge funds.
Research degrees
Our PhD is a three-year programme with
a strong computational and operational
component that should appeal if your
existing background is in computational
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