Broadly speaking I think that you are speaking about two things: derivatives pricing (this is what people think when thy talk about quantitative finance) and algorithmic trading (which can be either pure market making or alpha seeking speculation ;).
To better understand the difference between the different branches of QF world, visit this site:https://www.quantstart.com/articles/Quantitative-Finance-Rea...
It has a comprehensive list of references and articles describing in details what to expect in different jobs.
It won't harm if you occasionally visit https://forum.wilmott.com/.
And finally, for shit'n'giggles: http://www.zerohedge.com/ ;)