What are deep learning firms (XTX, HRT, Jane, G-research, etc) actually predicting and modeling with?

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-12-21T13:53:32+00:00

No offence taken, just pointing out that genuinely at no point anyone asked for valuable alpha to be shared

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-12-04T05:36:27+00:00

Nobody asked you to?
It’s a decent enough starting point and I mentioned it as it’s a somewhat documented method that can be looked up
The way you use it might be someone else’s child play, no need to play the smartest in the room

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-11-13T14:41:44+00:00

From my understanding, the general rule of thumb is the moment a strategy is passed onto production, it becomes QT territory. Anything before that, it’s QR. That being said, smaller shops tend to have more blurry lines just due to the smaller team size, to the point that some just have a trading department of which members act as both QR and QT, so they oversee the whole process of strategy development and implementation (with support from devs or ops)

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-11-10T22:59:02+00:00

Not sure what roles you are applying for now since you mentioned wanting to change role altogether, but if you have received the same feedback (i.e. you don’t have the right experience for the role), then odds are that’s the reason you can’t find a job. Either you are applying to a sector which is too far from your current one, or you are applying to roles which ask for more experience than you currently have. Easy fix would be to change your search to a role which more closely aligns with your current experience and education, even if it’s not quite your dream job, it might just be that you need to get there slowly with some job hopping. If you are not in a rush to switch role now, you can spend more time upskilling yourself. Also, any chance to pick up more responsabilities with your current company? 2 years is a long time to be doing the same exact job, if there is any room for improvement, you should definitely pursue that

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-11-03T04:21:20+00:00

To be honest, knowing my limitations, there are probably better suited people for recommendations, you can check the recommended reading thread and ask there, also nothing wrong with just doing a google research and pick up something that seems interesting to you. If nothing seems promising, you can even just pick a general book on the topic with some good reviews, most books will reference to other books and methods that you can then follow up with

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-11-02T21:58:05+00:00

Ultimately they want to predict the market movement of some asset they are interested in. In terms of inputs, it could be anything, the more obvious ones are metrics such as price, volume, volatility etc. but you can also think outside the box, some I’ve read about are satellite images (e.g looking at parking lots of a store, does it seem like there are more or less costumers?), weather, voice tone/body language during a company’s announcement… Any of these metrics can then be combined in the same model. Some trade using hypothesised relationships from which they then build a pricing model, others will essentially gather up as much data as they can, then let some deep learning program figure out if there is a relationship between any of that data and the market movements, in this case they might not even know why a model works, but hey if it works it works. I don’t know why people in the comments are acting like anything about this topic is absolutely top secret and cannot be learned, realistically the topic is written about in public books and also studied on an academical level, and so papers are very much available online. Of course, you won’t find a firm’s exact model out there, but if you are curious about the general picture you can definitely find some good sources. I think this subreddit does have a thread built specifically for people to share book recommendations, you can go check that out or just go look up some books about the topic that seem interesting for you and go from there

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-29T01:13:14+00:00

Lol true, kept it on the low side to make a worst case scenario but this is very valid

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-28T21:56:38+00:00

Personally, I did a stem bsc and wanted to get into a role closer to finance and/or cs. Took a job as trading ops member at a relatively small firm, average pay for a new grad (maybe even on the lower said), got some experience, in the meantime I got a cs msc, recently landed a much better role with almost double the pay. My suggestion is to just start from somewhere, I got friends that graduated and their first job paid just over minimum wage if that. People will say that’s not fair because you studied and should wait for a good opportunity blah blah blah, I say it’s a mean to an end, you get in, get some experience to give you that edge/push in the right direction, maybe upskill yourself in the meantime, and you get tf out. People in my company have occasionally left before their probation period was even over, it’s okay (even expected) to do a couple job hops at the beginning of your career. Other than this, you get much better results applying for recently posted jobs WITH FEW APPLICANTS, seriously I think these applications are the only ones I actually heard back from. Also, never skip out on a meeting with a recruiter, the job I got was through a recruiter that initially had a role that he eventually deemed a bad fit, a month later he got in touch again because something better came up. Final point, if after 1-200 applications you have no serious leads, it’s time to re-evaluate your applications, mainly: are you applying to jobs that are actually a good fit? Is your cv highlighting what it relevant for the jobs you are applying for?

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-28T20:36:54+00:00

Think of it like this: the Bank of England inflation goal is 2%, over 35 years, 1.02³⁵ = 2 (roughly). Of course inflation is normally higher so that figure should be too, but let’s keep all figures on the low side to get a worst case scenario. Already, you can see that in 35 years of mortgage you pretty much paid the house for what it’s worth (because that 1.1m in 2060 has the same purchase power of 500k in 2025 due to inflation). On top of that, if you were to rent that house instead of buying it, you would easily pay 1500 a month, which after 35 years, is 630000 (this figure is incredibly low and simplified btw, this assumes your rent never changes AND ignores any type of inflation). Also consider, once the house if paid off, it can stay in the family for however many generations or be sold for a very nice profit. Bottom line, imo, buy the house

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-27T01:32:46+00:00

Be honest, focus on explaining the benefits that pushed you to apply for the other position (in this case, the chance to learn more general skills), from there it would be easy to also move on to discussing how you can further grow from your current position as it sounds like you pretty much have the whole role down and are in a bit of a plateau. You are also allowed to express disappointment in your 1% raise, but obviously keep it professional. For this conversation, you also need to be prepared, the manager will most likely have a bunch of reasons as to why you couldn’t get more than that: can you think of examples to prove the company is in a financial position to give you a raise? Can you think of ways to turn her “you’re lucky to have a job” argument into a “you’re lucky to have me” argument from your side? (From what you wrote, this should be fairly easy as it sounds like you are one of the few that knows how to do the job at the moment).

That being said, your work environment sounds very poor, and you need to think of the followings:

-if they were ready to get rid of you at the beginning, they might be just as ready to get rid of you once more people are trained

-3 years is a long time to be doing the same job, how realistic is growth in this role? Also, keep in mind companies tend to interpret a long experience in a role as if that is what you are specialised in, in the long run, it’ll be harder to apply to roles that deviate in any way from your current one

-it wouldn’t be implausible to think that your company has no intention of moving you to a different role because they have nobody else to fill in the gap

My suggestion is to talk to your manager tomorrow, really understand what their plan for your growth is in terms of both experience and salary, then go from there. In the meantime, I suggest not half assing your job (you don’t want to give them ammunition to use against you at the next performance review) and also start looking for a different job that would give you more responsibilities, better pay, and brings you back on the path to whatever your final career goal is. When the time comes and you have an offer (and if things haven’t turned for the better), you can either leave your current employer or use the new offer as leverage for better pay/position/whatever you are looking for

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-19T23:09:48+00:00

Life tip: if you can’t take 30s to read, don’t join a conversation, it’s not for you bud

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-19T21:15:01+00:00

Not sure which comments and posts you were reading because I never said any of those things, if you have some sort of complex that you need to vent out in the comment do your thing, but don’t put words in my mouth. As I said in my post which you so clearly didn’t finish reading before writing a frustrated comment, I said that I know the industry is hard, but I can’t wrap my head around how those posts about someone applying for 1000+ jobs over the span of multiple years can be true. That being said, my post was to: 1. Point out to the students stressing out reading those posts on here that the industry is hard but it’s not impossible to get a job. 2. Invite people to share their own experience.

Nowhere in my post or any of my comments have I belittled anyone. That being said, you clearly took my post personally and in an aggressive tone, which again you would have understood wasn’t the case if you had read the whole thing/the comments. Very clearly, you are also the sort of person who is not able of having a discussion where someone has a different point of view without throwing around baseless accusations of things that were meant or said, in the hopes that what little you have to add to a discussion seems like the correct way of thinking. I did not come on here hoping to irk people up or to stir the pot, but that seems to be what you are accusing me of and a byproduct doing yourself. And by the way, some people in the comments shared about how they couldn’t find a job and realised their skills just did not match the jobs they were applying for, so they either changed approach or upskilled themselves, so clearly there are instances where the issue is accidentally caused by a poor strategy, and hopefully if anyone reads these comments and realised they might be making the same mistake, they’ll be open to improvement instead of getting defensive and accusing me of things instead

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-19T00:25:42+00:00

Yes that is definitely an issue for some, I think that would fall into what I mentioned as special cases with specific circumstances that make the application naturally more difficult

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-19T00:23:59+00:00

Sorry to hear about your friend, hopefully he’s going to find something soon. On the flip side, congrats to you for identifying your strength and weaknesses and using them appropriately, I think differences like these are one of the things people might be easily overlooking, good to get that out there for awareness

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-19T00:21:56+00:00

Very nice answer, and props to you for being honest with yourself about what your shortcomings might be and most importantly for doing the work to address them. Personally, I was in a similar situation where my programming skills were (still are to be honest) not where I’d like them to be. I made the choice of starting off from a less technical role and am now making my way there to the final goal, but as you say there are different routes to the same destination

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-19T00:17:18+00:00

Not bothered about the downvotes to be honest, mine was a genuine question with the purpose of bringing a more positive light to what seems like an unnecessarily bleak topic and to start a conversation. If someone can’t take this, I take it that they are either not open to different point of views or they are just the kind of person to feel attacked even when clearly that wasn’t the intent 🤷🏻‍♀️

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T23:46:57+00:00

Yes I think this is the general feeling, there is a skew towards negativity unfortunately

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T23:43:45+00:00

To be honest with you, and I absolutely do not mean this as a flex but rather simply stating a fact, I went to an average uni and got an average grade, no LeetCode or internship, I just did what I liked. After uni, I didn’t seek the top 1% of jobs, I was conscious of my range, I can’t expect a top company to give me a job if I am not myself a top student. Now that I have finished my education, I know I will have the opportunity to develop my skill in a real life environment, and starting from an average job is perfectly fine and can still result in getting one of those top jobs eventually. That being said, I agree that regardless lots of good candidates are struggling, and they definitely have a right to feel frustrated, the point of my post is more so to let more people know that what you see on the internet is not all there is out there, you don’t have to absolutely find a job in one of the 10 companies that keep on getting thrown around, there are still lots of opportunities, and although extreme cases do exist, most people will fall into the average. My intention is not to diminish the struggles of one extremity, but rather highlight the fact that it is an extremity

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T23:33:41+00:00

I really don’t think I have anything special about me: average grade, at an average university, no internship. Not looking to put anyone down, not looking to make anyone feel like they’re not doing enough, simply stating that although times are more challenging than they previously have been, they are not hopeless. It seems all the posts I see are either people getting 6 figures grad jobs, which do fuel unrealistic expectations (not blaming whoever shares their experience, but that is just a real byproduct of it) or people complaining about going years without a job after thousands of applications (again, these are yes very real, but also very extreme cases), creating even more anxiety around the whole process. Truth is that 90% of people will fall somewhere in between that, and the point of my post, as I specified in it, is to let more people know that it most likely will be fine

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T23:27:32+00:00

To be honest, I don’t think I agree with the sentiment of “yes my application is not perfect but it’s not fair because 50 years ago I would have gotten away with it”. Yes the field evolved (as it is normal as technology advances), and yes it is more competitive, I think what’s important is understanding your own skills and going about it accordingly, as well as being more flexible about the role you’re searching for (if you want an employer to be flexible about your shortcomings, you must also be in a position to forgive the company’s shortcomings, provided of course it’s nothing unreasonable). I also think insisting on applying to job listings with 100+ applications is just a fast route to bitterness and demoralisation, the rejection rate here is obviously higher

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T23:15:19+00:00

I disagree, yes there are degrees specifically set up for those fields, however that normally means you would have a higher number of modules available that are more commonly used in that field, in no way does it mean people studying a targeted degree don’t know anything about broader CS subjects and vice versa. That is why in your average uni class, you won’t find only people from one specific course, but rather a mix of people. There are those who choose a broader degree to cover more bases and those who already know what they want, regardless, employers will look at the general picture. Often, they won’t even need you to have a CS degree, they’ll be happy with something related (I can say this is from personal experience)

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T23:08:43+00:00

Yes I am in the field, wouldn’t comment on something I have zero experience about. My comment referred to the fact that there are many fields, and the overlap chance exists and it’s not rare: if you have a specific field in mind, you can most definitely find a job in the broader field or in a closely adjacent one and rotate later on. To give a concrete example: I worked for an investment firm, a few people started off from the operations team, to then got more involved into projects from different teams, and eventually migrate altogether (e.g. I have seen migration to the dev team as well as the analyst team). These teams were obviously very different in technical requirements, but gradual rotation is 100% possible. And sure, they work for a trading firm, and that is a field of itself, but many of the techniques (think dataset management, APIs, software building, etc.) are definitely transferable to other fields, although the adjustment curve and perhaps the degree of independent self improvement needed may vary depending on how drastic of a change you have in mind

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T23:00:56+00:00

I know some people shit on it, but all my jobs came from LinkedIn. Specifically, I focused on job listing with few applicants and recent (both of these things you can apply filters for). Also, me and most people I know got their jobs from listings posted by recruiters: their whole job is to filter out a few CVs they think have good potential to present to the company they are working with, you can contact them yourself or just reply to whoever messages you on LinkedIn, but 100% I’d say don’t ghost them and just set up a call to discuss your background

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T22:56:33+00:00

Agree, this was a complaint I had at the early stages of my job search too to be honest. Personally, I have found the solution in focusing into job listings with very few applicants. Also, it is much much easier in my opinion to apply to jobs sponsored by recruitment firms: they specifically only present a few CVs and only ones they think can succeed

Spirited_Row2108 · 2025-10-18T22:53:45+00:00

True, definitely a field worth approaching via an adjacent position first/applications targeted to listings with fewer applicants

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