May
28th

Creating a High frequency statistical arbitrage trading house

Posted by admin

Well let’s just say I figure out this myself, after going through tons of head hunters, recruitment and job portals about jobs they are hiring, and second guessing how they make up for the department. In order to build a department of High frequency statistical arbitrage trading, we would probably need these people with these skill sets:

Quants:

2-3 Quantitative Analysts, with skill sets involving options pricing, markets futures calculation, and forex triangle arb and probably a commodity stat arb. They will need to work on using the right formulas with the right markets, and the expected output.

Software Engineers:
3-4 Java and C++. Java provides the web front ends while the C++ algo does the high frequency stuff because the language allows fast execution. Probably some very intelligent developers who wrote algos more than payrolls or database info systems. These guys need to work very closely with the quants, as well as the traders.

Traders:
Depends.. Traders who know the markets well, and know a specific market or securities well, with proven strategies. People with real trading experience provides the team, the algo, the markets sentiments, and analysis, and other events that may drive prices.

IT – Infrastructure:
This team includes networking and communications gurus from the IT industry. With good experience on linking up almost any devices, they also need to know how to allow high bandwidth, networking devices which allows high throughput of speed, ensure uptime.

Fund / Portolio / Risk management:

This is your typical guy(s) who does the most important job of managing the money. Without good management, no matter how good a strategy is, risks are still involve.

So this shall be what I think about creating one such fund. Call it a hedge fund with a stat arb strategy. Any banks or startups could build it, provided with the right tools and people.

   

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Files under Hedging strategies


3 Responses to “Creating a High frequency statistical arbitrage trading house”

  1. By GSX-R750 guy on Jul 18, 2010 | Reply

    Why jesus allows this sort of thing to continue is a mystery.

    Sent from my Android phone

  2. By stat arb on Oct 26, 2010 | Reply

    How are you going to have the traders interface with the quants? Either you’re going by market sentiment and the traders’ strategy, or you’re going with quant trading.

  3. By admin on Oct 26, 2010 | Reply

    Well the traders involved with the real world markets most of the time, while quants focuses on getting their models right.

    If you’re a pure quant who is very strong in academics, well the books doesn’t teach to “make money out of stock markets”, but rather the concepts behind it.

    The traders on the other hand understands the dynamics, the regulations, the economics, the money management, the easiest job that is to buy and sell and talk with the prime brokers etc. You can’t have quants know so much or else nobody will do the right maths.

    Finally, it is also market and vehicle/instruments dependent as well. I hope I answer your question, else I would love to hear answers from someone else too !

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