I am pretty new to C++ and Linux, although programming in general is not new to me (Pascal, Fortran).
By education I am physicist. I started teaching college two years ago when I got out of the gradschool (mostly because there weren't that many jobs available) but I am not that much interested in teaching at this point in my life (pushing 33).

The career I am interested in is financial analysis. Statistical physics is my favorite, and I know it has been succesfully applied to the financial markets (modeling interest rates, risk evaluation,..).

Switching to this field is the reason why I decided to train myself in C++.

I actualy wondered if there are people from this field (financial analysts) on this forum. It would be really helpfull to have few questions answered. You can leave your email or you can answer questions right here. Thanks.

The 2 main places to look for linux software are freshmeat.net & sourceforge.net. You might also find some things at kde-apps.org, I think there's a Gnome site too, but I don't use Gnome.