<story><title>D.E. Shaw and how computer geeks and English majors transformed Wall St. (2018)</title><url>https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/d-e-shaw-the-first-great-quant-hedge-fund.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>scottlocklin</author><text>What a marketing submarine! [0]&lt;p&gt;Let me count the vastly more transformational and earlier quantitative funds just off the top of my head: Princeton Newport, Commodities Corporation, Tudor, RenTech, Chicago Research; hell even Soros and the Tigers were more influential and just as quantitative. DE Shaw was an early mover for certain kinds of automated trading, but if he had never met Nunzio Tartaglia (and basically stole his secret sauce -hey at least they mentioned Morgan Stanley), he&amp;#x27;d still be writing shitty papers on parallel computing models at Columbia. He got lucky, and was able to take advantage of his luck, but he is also a garbage human being who has made the world worse[1][2]. His company once offered me a job: I told them to go fuck themselves, and the only better &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; decision I made was saying no to Bear Stearns in 2006.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;submarine.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;submarine.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nymag.com&amp;#x2F;intelligencer&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;david-e-shaw-college-donations.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nymag.com&amp;#x2F;intelligencer&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;david-e-shaw-college...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.propublica.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;hedge-fund-billionaires-donations-college-admissions-elite-universities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.propublica.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;hedge-fund-billionaires-d...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>D.E. Shaw and how computer geeks and English majors transformed Wall St. (2018)</title><url>https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/d-e-shaw-the-first-great-quant-hedge-fund.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dcaisen</author><text>Is David Shaw brilliant? Absolutely. Has the quant&amp;#x2F;technology revolution been a positive development for financial markets? No doubt.&lt;p&gt;But secondary trading is still a zero-sum game. Firms like D.E. Shaw are profit maximizing and extract a huge amount of value from society. Probably less than the old boys club they replaced, but probably much more than necessary. There is a great deal of competition among quant trading firms overall, and their rise has coincided with electronification of markets, tighter spreads, lower commissions - all good things. But if the forces of capitalism are truly working, you have to wonder why so many firms like these continue to print money year after year (although there have been some new developments-- for example, stock exchanges have gotten much more effective at monetizing their access and data feeds, which has really put the squeeze HFT market makers; still, zero-sum game though).&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no good reason we can&amp;#x27;t have it all: efficiently-priced modern-technology financial markets without these huge rents being pulled out. And I shouldn&amp;#x27;t pick on quant firms specifically - every layer of the system extracts its share, and I&amp;#x27;d argue brokers and exchanges are much worse since they&amp;#x27;re fiduciaries and semi-regulatory entities, respectively, and riddled with conflicts of interest.&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: former co-founder&amp;#x2F;head quant at IEX (Flash Boys), current CEO of Proof Trading (YC S19)</text></comment>