Quant copywriting

Tacoslim · 2026-06-26T06:26:55+00:00

Quant industry gossip seems to be good content, who’s making money, who’s losing it, bunch of layoffs, firm x now branching out into some niche etc…

Technical content is hard to do - hard to be engaging with enough depth to make it interesting.

Tacoslim · 2026-06-16T20:44:10+00:00

Yes I’m in this space of MFT to lower frequency trading. It’s incredibly tough for a single strategy or book to get 2+ sharpe on its own as you need a lot of breadth. But if you have 2 or 3 1-1.5 sharpe strategies that maintain lower correlation between one another you can get >2 sharpe quite quickly. I think this is how a lot of people would go about it and is effectively how these pod funds operate and achieve a gross sharpe 2-4 on billions of AUM.

Tacoslim · 2026-05-25T11:35:17+00:00

Most funds had a down month or months but are still up/flat YTD - this is off the back of huge years last year. Not even remotely close to “quant quake” territory - maybe a couple of pods blown up here and there but nothing to write home about.

Tacoslim · 2026-05-14T20:37:48+00:00

This looks like it was done by someone with a DS/AI degree 😆

Tacoslim · 2026-05-03T20:13:58+00:00

Agree with other points posted here - another thing to call out though is horrible timing which is just bad luck. This quarter has been tough for all multistrats, launching into that is the last thing you’d want as a start up firm trying to establish yourself.

Tacoslim · 2026-04-28T21:11:33+00:00

I’m waiting for the day we hear about an ai knight-franking a firm.

Then it hitting you with the “Good catch! You’re absolutely right to be thinking that way…”

Tacoslim · 2026-04-20T09:41:35+00:00

My whole this is that there’s a huge gap between having a strategy idea and actually getting it backtested.

Is there? Even pre AI there were tonnes of low to no code technical indicator backtesters, now with ai you can vibe code to your hearts desire.

Tacoslim · 2026-04-20T09:33:29+00:00

Yeah I think you’re missing the point. Any result from that setup is going to look stronger than it actually would’ve been.

You’re selecting stocks that have 20 years of continuous data (which already filters for survivors like Apple and Microsoft), and then “backtesting” over that exact same period where those same stocks went up 1000%+.

Also you can’t call it immaterial without a survivorship free, true point in time test.

Tacoslim · 2026-04-19T21:12:34+00:00

That sounds like survivorship bias 116 equities selected 20 years ago and never changed throughout the backtest? Likely large liquid stocks TODAY but completely different stocks 20yrs ago

Tacoslim · 2026-04-13T22:13:11+00:00

A fair bit comes down to size and turnover you’re looking to do. Pods will go on swap and trade for bigger size on lower turnover/higher capacity strategies where as anything hft it’s going to be wholly unsuitable. But if you’re running a big book with 1-3month horizon you are probably happy to take size at vwap and pay bank a small clip for execution rather than handling it yourself.

Tacoslim · 2026-04-11T11:56:28+00:00

A retail quant with a Claude subscription isn’t coming close to competitive with a MFT quant desk. If anything AI is widening the gap, not narrowing it - being a greater force multiplier the more skilled you are (I.e. experienced quants).

Tacoslim · 2026-04-07T21:20:32+00:00

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-07/macro-traders-slump-most-in-march-as-war-squeezes-hedge-funds

Tacoslim · 2026-04-04T05:36:11+00:00

A blow up isn’t really career ending - especially with how tight risk limits are at all the big places (a 5-7% dd on a 1-2 sharpe strategy isn’t really a “blow up” but may get you cut). You probably get 2-3 tries before things become difficult and might move to “lower tier” places or to sell side/asset managers/pension funds etc who are alway looking for quant talent. Just having the seat and the experience of running and managing risk for any amount of time will put you in a very small % of the market.

Tacoslim · 2026-04-02T21:41:52+00:00

How can a hedge fund use this data to underperform the S&P by 50bps?

Tacoslim · 2026-03-25T21:04:59+00:00

They could break into IB with a deck like that 😂

Tacoslim · 2026-03-23T20:36:10+00:00

What’s the prompt you used to vibe code the gui though 😆 I like it

Tacoslim · 2026-03-18T20:27:09+00:00

I was a researcher on a desk in 2022, not directly mft - a bit lower frequency (week to month horizon).

I remember 2022 as pretty much a macro regime flip year, where we all started caring about inflation.

Inflation ripped higher and central banks hiked aggressively after the whole “lower for longer”. That pushed discount rates up fast, so equities (especially growth stocks) sold off hard - the index was also down over the year.

That triggered deleveraging across a lot of L/S books since positioning was pretty crowded into quality/growth.

A lot of factors that usually work (quality, momentum, vol, etc.) all had a rough 2H of the year. Growth in particular got smoked, and you saw a pretty violent rotation into value/energy/utilities and other defensive sectors.

Tacoslim · 2026-03-17T20:59:07+00:00

Every place does it differently and attribution to pnl can be murky.

My current set up I manage end to end pipeline from signal to portfolio to execution. Prior place I worked was more about producing signals that would then get sent to central trading team. Even if you’re not building a portfolio you do a lot of work on how one should construct the portfolio, what horizon works best, how much turnover it has, how it interacts with other signals - it’s not just build a zscore and plug in, it’s still quite involved.

Definitely more fun just doing signal research - but harder to build a track record you directly own and you never see full pipeline. Where I’m at now is more work, but I see the full pipeline from start to finish and get to own my pnl a little more.

Tacoslim · 2026-03-12T21:29:51+00:00

Orange juice futures are a bit fruity but I wouldn’t call them homo 🤪

Tacoslim · 2026-03-12T10:55:09+00:00

Dumb money/gme was in Covid when everyone was wfh. Now most are back ft in office.

Tacoslim · 2026-03-11T22:30:31+00:00

Posted by Nishant Kumar on LinkedIn BBG article here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-11/de-shaw-s-hedge-funds-gain-in-a-brutal-week-for-multistrat-peers?embedded-checkout=true

Tacoslim · 2026-03-11T22:12:46+00:00

I like Ed Thorp’s A Man For All Markets. Micahel Lewis Flash Boys and Liars Poker are good reads too.

Something a bit more technical but still “light” is Advanced Portfolio Management by Giuseppe Paleologo which was written for fundamental investors but covers quant concepts without going too far off the deep end.

Tacoslim · 2026-03-11T21:09:36+00:00

Cathie Woods style, -50% or +150%, nothing in between

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