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Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

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41–50 of 111 posts

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#41

The problem with algorithmic trading is that markets are complex systems. As an algorithm is adopted, it changes the dynamics of the market, and the result the assumptions it was based on tend to no longer hold. Note that humans trade via implicit algorithms, which is part of the reason why consistently outperforming the market is highly unlikely. In my opinion, the whole idea of investing to try and maximize profits…

Unless you're trading low volume penny stocks, or have hundreds of millions of dollars under your control, your trades will likely not affect anything. Considering that you need lots of data and high frequency, you will not be trading penny stocks with your [hypothetical] clever algorithm.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#42
post #37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, but take glassdoor with a huge grain of salt, people make up crap to post on there all the time.

After a certain number of reviews, Glassdoor becomes a more honest reflection of a company's actual state than anything else. It's certainly more truthful that marketing fluff pieces like this.

Absolutely. It's a great resource, I have used it regularly since it launched.

People still make up fiction and post it on there all. the. time. Keep that in mind.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#43
post #13

I just checked out glassdoor, and it seems like they don't know what their product should be since top execs don't want to agree on anything. > We have too many executives for a company this size - most don't add much value except for fighting with each other and politicizing issues. The CEO lives in HongKong and remotely manages this crew of distrusting, non-supportive and close-minded execs. The HR function is prac…

Which is really odd, since if they had any idea of what they were doing, they wouldn't need to sell. Trading is among one of the few industries out there where you don't need to have anything like a customer.

What you do is make money, and if you're making money, well, you don't need to ask anybody else for money. This tells me that its a bunch of executives who either don't know anything about trading and/or don't have any coherent strategy, and are really just trying to throw enough buzzwords out there to get investor capitol.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#44
post #21

The clickbait headline is amusing, but "Wall Street" has been doing this > 10 years. I'm genuinely not sure if they're trying to "beat wall street" or simply be yet another quantitative hedge fund that happens to use machine learning and neural networks to power their strategies. Most real electronic trading firms are putting those algorithms in hardware. Source: Have worked in HFT the past 10 years.

> Source: Have worked in HFT the past 10 years.

This is not about High Frequency Trading, but about machine learning applied to the stock market.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have a stock broker co-worker who had one rule for investing if day trading or even trying to employ a strategy: "You can't fight the Street." His point was trying to bet against a momentum trade or some other scenario was foolish. He watched time and again. There were opportunities to get with the crowd, or be on the wrong side.

Great point. And even if you are "with the crowd" more often than you are not, your timing/sizing on each trade you make as a day trader or mom-and-pop investor is very likely to be worse than an institutional trading firm. So you can be right on a "buy" vs "sell" decision 51% of the time, but an algo trading firm has probably executed with better timing/trade size and beaten you to a percentage of the profit. A frie…

I'd rather just try really hard to get people to understand that active trading is negative sum, and that unless (As a mom and pop investor) you are properly bench-marking against a relevant index - you're just lying to yourself.

Sure HFT guys are faster than you to get short term signals and make money on the micro scale - but even ignoring that way too many people are thinking they're beating the market and they really really aren't.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#46
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. And even if you are "with the crowd" more often than you are not, your timing/sizing on each trade you make as a day trader or mom-and-pop investor is very likely to be worse than an institutional trading firm. So you can be right on a "buy" vs "sell" decision 51% of the time, but an algo trading firm has probably executed with better timing/trade size and beaten you to a percentage of the profit. A frie…

I'd rather just try really hard to get people to understand that active trading is negative sum, and that unless (As a mom and pop investor) you are properly bench-marking against a relevant index - you're just lying to yourself. Sure HFT guys are faster than you to get short term signals and make money on the micro scale - but even ignoring that way too many people are thinking they're beating the market and they re…

You just nailed it! I work for a very large HFT and my portfolio for my 401k and extra retirement (in the market) is primarily low cost / fee vanguard index funds. You really can't beat a FPGA with tick to trade times in the milliseconds. Your optical nerve likely hasn't even processed a number changing yet.

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#47
post #21

The clickbait headline is amusing, but "Wall Street" has been doing this > 10 years. I'm genuinely not sure if they're trying to "beat wall street" or simply be yet another quantitative hedge fund that happens to use machine learning and neural networks to power their strategies. Most real electronic trading firms are putting those algorithms in hardware. Source: Have worked in HFT the past 10 years.

> Source: Have worked in HFT the past 10 years. This is not about High Frequency Trading, but about machine learning applied to the stock market.

Which every single HFT firm that isn't a pure market maker (such as Virtu Financial, my previous employer) does already and has done for years. That is my point. Here's a great example of Citadel talking about how they use Hashicorp nomad to spin up 100,000 cpu research jobs on AWS.

What do you think their 100k cpu jobs are doing? Machine learning and quantative analysis, what else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRtRwhL5lwM

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#48
post #13

I just checked out glassdoor, and it seems like they don't know what their product should be since top execs don't want to agree on anything. > We have too many executives for a company this size - most don't add much value except for fighting with each other and politicizing issues. The CEO lives in HongKong and remotely manages this crew of distrusting, non-supportive and close-minded execs. The HR function is prac…

Which is really odd, since if they had any idea of what they were doing, they wouldn't need to sell. Trading is among one of the few industries out there where you don't need to have anything like a customer. What you do is make money, and if you're making money, well, you don't need to ask anybody else for money. This tells me that its a bunch of executives who either don't know anything about trading and/or don't h…

>" Trading is among one of the few industries out there where you don't need to have anything like a customer."

Trading yes but a hedge fund or any fund really implies customers no?

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#49
post #36
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, but take glassdoor with a huge grain of salt, people make up crap to post on there all the time.

The company I work for is around 100 people, but the few postings I have seen that are negative and descriptive are on the mark. Maybe Tolstoy was right about unhappy companies as well.

Curious to what your are referring to, related to Tolstoy (or Tolstoj as I like to write his name). Can you elaborate? Thanks!

Re: Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes on Wall Street with AI Trader

#50
post #13

I just checked out glassdoor, and it seems like they don't know what their product should be since top execs don't want to agree on anything. > We have too many executives for a company this size - most don't add much value except for fighting with each other and politicizing issues. The CEO lives in HongKong and remotely manages this crew of distrusting, non-supportive and close-minded execs. The HR function is prac…

Which is really odd, since if they had any idea of what they were doing, they wouldn't need to sell. Trading is among one of the few industries out there where you don't need to have anything like a customer. What you do is make money, and if you're making money, well, you don't need to ask anybody else for money. This tells me that its a bunch of executives who either don't know anything about trading and/or don't h…

"Trading is among one of the few industries out there where you don't need to have anything like a customer."

Yes, but knowing how to trade is obviously very important, it's not just picking stocks, it's risk management, regulatory issues, and tons of industry specific knowledge.

That said - if they have 'tech that works' they should be able to partner with a few financial people and wrap a fund around it without too much trouble.

That so much negativity is on Glassdoor is really a bad sign.

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