ABSTRACT
The emergence of relatively low-cost yet powerful desktop computers has had a profound impact on the financial services industry. The efforts of banks and money management firms to put more computing power on the desktops of traders, analysts, and quantitative researchers has led to the development of sophisticated software packages for research, analytic prototyping, and application development. This chapter deals with a discussion of important features in both areas. The quality of any analytic prototyping and application development environment can be assessed along two dimensions: core/functional analytics, and development/development support tools. Core analytics include tools for optimization, statistical analysis, and mathematics. Functional analytics include analytics for fixed income, equity, derivatives, portfolio optimization, risk management, and foreign exchange. The availability of core analytics is an important concern in choosing a prototyping environment. Especially important are tool sets for optimization, statistics, and matrix mathematics.
