The Million-Dollar Talent Wars for 20-Something Math Geniuses

Flush with cash, Wall Street and Silicon Valley are vying to hire the same tiny pool of genius graduatesThere has never been a better time to be a math nerd.New college graduates and Ph.D.s are now securing million-dollar pay deals from elite trading firms seeking to secure the best and brightest amid fierce competition from artificial-intelligence companies.So-called quant firms, which use sophisticated mathematical models to come up with trades, have for years wooed top young talent with lucrative compensation that big banks struggle to match. Now, the AI boom is pushing those numbers even higher.Just a few years ago, early-career...