Haven't seen this posted yet: Balyasny just cut 10 people running a $2 billion book. The hedge fund axed the 1-year-old team because of poor performance, sources say.
Apparently Balyasny created a unit called Synthesis last year that was supposed to blend human and machine. I'm guessing they got the inspiration from the study that showed human-computer teams outperformed both human-only and computer-only teams in chess. Interestingly, the study showed the best human-computer team wasn't comprised of grandmaster + computer, but just some random dude + computer.
Anyways, they recruited 9 sector heads that were PMs at places like Point72 and Citadel to provide the sector-specific knowledge (I'm guessing to provide the domain expertise to train the machines). Guess it hasn't been doing too well and they shut it after barely a year. Too bad, it sounds really cool and I bet this could have worked if they maybe worked out the kinks. Anyone else have any other info?
