Why this maths genius refuses to work for a hedge fund

R1234 said:
Phd quants in the hedge fund space are generally there for window dressing and are useless at actually producing long term growth. They attempt to use complexity to predict the unpredictable.
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I wouldn't want to poop on PhD quants... but when it comes to trading... the only math you really need is arithmetic. You do, however, need to be able to "observe and deduce".

KISS, baby!
 
R1234 said:
The ones that do still exist are the ones that had more simplistic strategies that could be explained to a grandmother.
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IMV, a good trade can be explained to a your grandmother in 10 words. (Yes, that simple! OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration... but only slightly.)
 
Smart Money said:
I just want to know when it went From “math” to “maths”. I’ve seen “maths” more in the last year than the rest of my entire life.
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. "The only difference between math and maths is where they're used. Math is the preferred term in the United States and Canada. Maths is the preferred term in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and other English-"
 
I turn down hedge fund recruiters about once a month . Terry Tao is a sharp guy but I made advancement on the Riemann hypothesis by adding dynamics to zeta . In a blog comment he said he couldn't figure out how to do it. Either he snubbed me or mail went to spam folder. Either way, unimpressed.
https://github.com/crowlogic/arb4j/blob/master/docs/X.pdf

Also the way you people blather on about what you think other people do and what their motivation is, is quite ludicrous
 
R1234 said:
That is what I've concluded - the KISS principle is what makes certain hedge funds and investment managers outlast the crowd. Years ago I worked as an analyst at a fund of funds where we would interview hedge funds to give them allocations. Many of these firms were quant funds that had or were a team of Phds with the most convoluted models imaginable. After all these years (about 20 years now), I would say 90% of those firms no longer exist. The ones that do still exist are the ones that had more simplistic strategies that could be explained to a grandmother. These firms tended to have much lower sharpe ratios (of around 1) than the flash-in-the-pan complex Phd quant firms.

That's not to say that Phd quants and low sharpe ratios are mutually exclusive. Take 2 sigma for example. I believe they have a few hundred Phds on staff but their fund offerings have a sharpe of around 1. So its safe to say that the Phds are merely window dressing. If these firms had some magical insight, why are we not seeing trillion dollar AUM firms?
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As the funds get bigger, it's harder to have a significant performance better than a sharpe of 1.
 
Pekelo said:
Nobody is irreplaceable, there are dozens like him. That doesn't make a HF profitable...

LTCM was full of geniuses...
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My CS professor was instrumental in building google's core search algorithm. In 2001 they offered in a job. He opted to stay in academics. He left billions of net worth on the table, while google still managed to dominate search without him.
 
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