<p>^God I hope so</p>
<p>Seriously, the structured products traders around me all have finance backgrounds, not math or physics.</p>
<p>I feel that the firms hire quants to do quant stuff, but recognize that there has to both another half, those with personality, and those who don't need/rely on numbers to make snap decisions. </p>
<p>I want to go into finance, and I have decent math skills, I've gotten an A in a college stat course while in HS, but haven't taken a calc course yet. I'm headed to NYU, so we'll see what happens. </p>
<p>I know a hedge fund manager who can barely do long division, so I think times have changed. There is a much greater emphasis on math, but everyone learns more now then they did 40 years ago. They didn't even have calculators then.</p>