D.E. Shaw – the quant king
More than just a systematic fund
Last week, reports appeared on Bloomberg that the quant king D. E. Shaw “is raising money for a new hedge fund, where for the first time the firm will ditch the algorithms and let human traders call all of the shots.” The new D.E. Shaw Cogence Fund is taking in $3-5 billion for pure discretionary trading without any systematic component to the fund.
D.E. Shaw is one of the most storied and longstanding names in quantitative and systematic hedge fund investing. Hence, it was unsurprising when social media lit up with commentators saying that this must be the top for the industry when even the masters of the systematic universe are turning from computers to humans. After all, the quant arms race is highly competitive, and margins even for the most technology-savvy firms can get eroded quickly, as we saw with high-frequency trading.
Dig a bit deeper, and you wonder if this is r…
