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This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds. I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.
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As pg mentioned above it is better to channel this talent to startup world :)
I don't know about that ... DE Shaw & Company takes its very smartest people (and a non-trivial portion of their profits) and puts them to work at DE Shaw Research, where they work on protein folding and other computational biology that could help cure cancer and HIV. I think that's a pretty worthwhile use of talent :-D From what I was told, David Shaw is spending most of his time on the research group these days. Th…
This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds. I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.
i'm not convinced they're smarter than anyone else. i'd rather invest in renaissance or citadel... my coworkers at morgan were all physics or cs phds. and a consulting expert got a nobel prize while i was there. amusingly, i interviewed at google around the same time, and some of the engineers were condescending about the quality and education of my coworkers.
I would not invest in anything from them however. Medallion has been closed for new money for many years now and all other offerings performed poorly to say it politely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i'm not convinced they're smarter than anyone else. i'd rather invest in renaissance or citadel... my coworkers at morgan were all physics or cs phds. and a consulting expert got a nobel prize while i was there. amusingly, i interviewed at google around the same time, and some of the engineers were condescending about the quality and education of my coworkers.
Renaissance over Citadel. If I'm not mistaken, Renaissance is purely automated trading. No traders or trading floor in the conventional sense. Plus they weathered the fallout of 08 much better than Citadel. What's sad is that these smart people, including ones I've met while working as a SysAdmin for a Prop Trading firm often don't have access to the capital to start their own shops. This is due to the incestuous nat…
The Medallion Fund has its own internal trading desk, staffed by approximately 20 traders, and trades from Monday opening bell in Australia through Friday closing bell in the US.
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Unless of course you follow that argument to its logical conclusion...
That's exactly what companies like GE and Intel do. I personally think it's terrible management practice, but it seems to work for them, and there's always fresh young blood coming in at the bottom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Tenure_as_CEO_of_GE
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/updated-rumors-intel-layo...
(The Intel practice was also confirmed in Andy Grove's book "Only the paranoid survive".)
This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds. I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.
They refused to interview me because my SAT scores from 12 years ago was too low for them. I had 1330.
Is 10% really that bad? If it's the bottom 10%, it should actually improve company's performance.
This is almost a pure software business, so why aren't these companies more like startups? Is it because of the expense of getting fine grained and low latency market data [eg. exchange colocation]? Or is it due to the contacts needed in the biz to get the 'investment' funds to trade with? Or is it because only large financial entities have access to these risky speculative trades?
Side note : I see Jane Street Capital use Ocaml, and some other quants use KDB/Q for implementing these kinds of algorithms, so it seems innovative languages give leverage here. I was thinking Node.js + a js BTree api to access streaming data would be a nice dev environment.
I assume their business model is roughly : to implement algorithms that find near-arbitrage opportunities by sifting through vast amounts of market data, then use those to multiply investment funds. This sounds like the perfect domain for a startup.. where a nimble small team of quant/developers would have huge advantages, by being faster to rollout. This is almost a pure software business, so why aren't these compan…
There are. http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/28/high-frequency-trading-pers...
Incidentally Jane Street isn't a hedge fund, it's a proprietary trading firm.
I assume their business model is roughly : to implement algorithms that find near-arbitrage opportunities by sifting through vast amounts of market data, then use those to multiply investment funds. This sounds like the perfect domain for a startup.. where a nimble small team of quant/developers would have huge advantages, by being faster to rollout. This is almost a pure software business, so why aren't these compan…
why aren't these companies more like startups? There are. http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/28/high-frequency-trading-pers... Incidentally Jane Street isn't a hedge fund, it's a proprietary trading firm.
ps. I never really understood the difference - Hedge Funds seem to be more about speculating via leverage than 'hedging'? [using their own proprietary algorithms to do that]