Debate old as time. I agree with you but this happens every cycle. RenTech doesn't have "real finance people" either. Maybe the problem was that they just had the wrong people, not their level of realness.
And Alameda seemed to be mainly people from Jane Street? There is a difference between trading firms with good tech (Jane Street) and firms taking prop risk (DE Shaw)...just based on what has been released, I agree that they didn't seem to know what they were doing. Unfortunately, the market doesn't know you went to MIT.
And they wouldn't have hired PMs with decades of experience, because no PM with decades of experience would have worked there.
DE Shaw takes directional risk. They have a lot of conventional strategies iirc (distressed debt, credit, etc.). Jane Street does a lot of ETF AP and other strategies that optimize for technology (afaik).
Alameda is/was strategies that optimize for technology, arbitrage etc. But with a massive one way directional long bet over the top.
Run by people with 1-2 years experience in shops that run a market neutral profile , in an environment where they believed the underlying asset goes up every single day.
Debate old as time. I agree with you but this happens every cycle. RenTech doesn't have "real finance people" either. Maybe the problem was that they just had the wrong people, not their level of realness.
And Alameda seemed to be mainly people from Jane Street? There is a difference between trading firms with good tech (Jane Street) and firms taking prop risk (DE Shaw)...just based on what has been released, I agree that they didn't seem to know what they were doing. Unfortunately, the market doesn't know you went to MIT.
And they wouldn't have hired PMs with decades of experience, because no PM with decades of experience would have worked there.