traders / PMs...how does a strategist who comes up with an intraday trading strategy get a trading seat at a fund?

as the title says...i have a strategy...medium frequency...trading futures, rules based, minutes to hours intraday holding period...its not fully automated tho...manual execution because of tweet/news/headline risk. Some days takes 5-8 trades...some days nothing.

what kind of track record do i need to build to get a look at a trading/pm seat? what is the absolute minimum before i bother trying to interview with a fund?

what would you look for when hiring a new trader/pm?

if i run the strategy at Collective2 (to create a public track record) for how long, and what type of stats, do i need to put up before i should start asking for interviews at the platform funds?

14 Comments
 

Any strategy -no matter how succesful- is expected to have a finite life. I was once told what the average shelf life was, i don't think it was more than 2yrs, definitely not more than 3.

So, naturally, any fund or platform looking to employ a quant PM would want this person to come up with new, money-making strategies after this first one. They dont want to be stuck with a one-trick poney. I'm not sure what it takes to prove this, other than obviously a track record of having developed many different strategies. Hopefully someone from the quant side can provide more color, but i would definitely temper any expectations of getting a PM seat on just one potentially promising strategy.

 

interesting thoughts....the strategy i've built uses the last 8 years to train...and has been running in a forward test for a few months and doing well. Unfortunately, its not fully automated, and even if it was, as you say...i'll need to build a track record.

so my question is...how long does an active strategy need to run to build up a track record?

 

I currently work in a buyside strategist role that covers exactly markets like this. These types of strategies turn over once a year in the best of cases. You sound extremely naive here - I have a good guess at what you are doing and I can tell you this is a super hot area this year, tons of people are going into this trade. Every backtest uses the last 10 years of data... you can come up with loads of strategies that test well. Its definitely good that your forward test is working out so far, but 8 years of solid backtest is by no means indicative of long shelf life.

 
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i should clarify...the strategy was not created by training on 8 years of data...it was created by observing current market conditions, and then back-tested on 8 years of data to see if the strategy would hold up under various time periods...and it did...so i'm running it forward now

my main question is...how long do i need to run forward until i should bother trying to ask for an interview at one of the multi-managers, to run a book?

and, what type of numbers (sharpe, return, drawdown, etc..) should i be targeting? The reason i ask is...should i press for the highest returns possible (i'm inclined to do this, because it my own money)...but i know that funds prefer low vol strategies from a risk mgmt standpoint...which implies lower returns with lower vol.

also, hopefully not that it matters, but i'm no longer with my previous employer..i'm just a guy with experience trading in the markets with a futures account...tracking performance at Collective2. I've worked for a number of years at a BB (a couple actually) but i'm no longer under their safety net. Sink or swim...its all on me.

 

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