Access to unlimited historical data

He earns performance fees ('commissions') on the profits of his fund.

The word "commissions" is typically used to designate an expense, not an income. I suppose what you originally meant to say was "management fees", or perhaps "incentive fees". Otherwise, the implication is, indeed, as Handle123 pointed out, that the profits are derived from the order flow rebates from exchanges/counterparties.
 
Nobody gets your point here and yet you still come across as being incredibly arrogant. Could it perhaps be an issue on your end? Or is that an impossibility?

And as just pointed out while writing this post, it was you who confused terminology. Perhaps a more humble attitude would have spared you some embarrassment.

He earns performance fees ('commissions') on the profits of his fund.
 
A hedge fund manager who can earn a fat performance fee on billions of dollars will make more money faster than trading his own account. Even the best hedge funds rarely average more than 20% per year. Averaging 20% a year on your own money is a respectable feat, but it won't make you wealthy very quickly. However, if your multi-billion dollar hedge fund can earn 20% a year and you receive a 30% performance fee on that 20%, you are going to make a tremendous amount of money for yourself.
 
Yawn

Are you bored or something? There is always something to backtest.

You know, you come across as someone who walks into a bar and says, "Barack Obama". When everyone looks at you with a question mark on their faces, you think to yourself, "Is it not abundantly clear that I've just ordered a "Bloody Mary" and a "Cosmopolitan"?
 
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I followed the career of a trader named Jaffray Woodriff who was outlined in one of the 'Market Wizards' books. His story was interesting to me because he is still using the same system he developed in college. Just before graduating college he related that he had a eureka moment and backtested for 2 days without sleep on his school's computers. The trading system he created then is essentially the automated trading system he still uses today to make around 100 million a year in commissions.

However, his story had some bumps in the road. Trading live did not work out so well for him initially and after a few years he took a job at a trading firm. He worked at the firm until he hammered out the bugs in his system.

Here's my theory. I think while working at the firm he had unlimited access to probably well over a hundred thousand dollars worth of historical data that spanned decades. Using this resource he was able to find the flaws in his system and get firing on all eight cylinders. Then he left his job and most likely took a copy of their data with him. Of course, it didn't take long after that before he was able to buy his own data.

It's HF market wizards, chapter 5. I recently re-read this.

For me the most interesting part of this story is that he is probably more secretive than anyone else in the book about what he does, and I found the description of what he did pretty intruging. So he's doing some kind of non linear analysis, or linear analysis on derivations of observable data like price, but on effects that work across markets, and also on effects that have persisted for some kind.

So quite different from the normal data mining approach I'm so skeptical about.

By the way I'm not sure what "a hundred thousand dollars worth" of data actually means, or meant in the past. Nowadays you could get that data for free. The normal model for getting data is a subscription model, which means you might be paying up to $500K a month to get tick level data from every exchange in the world, but the value of that data is hard to quantify.

GAT
 
how could you find what the author does intriguing if all you know is that he applied some "non linear, or linear analysis on derivatives of price". Thats like Ferrari revealing its new concept car and telling the press that it has an engine and 4 wheels.

It's HF market wizards, chapter 5. I recently re-read this.

For me the most interesting part of this story is that he is probably more secretive than anyone else in the book about what he does, and I found the description of what he did pretty intruging. So he's doing some kind of non linear analysis, or linear analysis on derivations of observable data like price, but on effects that work across markets, and also on effects that have persisted for some kind.

So quite different from the normal data mining approach I'm so skeptical about.

By the way I'm not sure what "a hundred thousand dollars worth" of data actually means, or meant in the past. Nowadays you could get that data for free. The normal model for getting data is a subscription model, which means you might be paying up to $500K a month to get tick level data from every exchange in the world, but the value of that data is hard to quantify.

GAT
 
how could you find what the author does intriguing if all you know is that he applied some "non linear, or linear analysis on derivatives of price". Thats like Ferrari revealing its new concept car and telling the press that it has an engine and 4 wheels.

Because most people who do that kind of thing fail badly, through overfitting. And they normally fit specific to a market, and they also have to refit their models frequently. So this guy is doing something genuinely different, and making a success of something that most people fail at. Personally I find that interesting. There's also enough of a hint that I can speculate on what they might be doing, compared to say Jim Simons where I have absolutely no clue and I probably couldn't replicate it anyway.

So it's more like Ferrari revealing a concept car with no engine that still runs.

GAT
 
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