back in the day, Commodities Corp was like the epicenter of market wizards, having all of those superstars trading in 1 building at the same time: Michael Marcus Paul Tudor Jones Bruce Kovner Ed Seykota Louis Bacon but today, the setups just seem very diffuse, where (a) the "famous name" on the door sometimes doesnt even trade anymore, with all their efforts spent on non-trading activities (b) only 1 bigshot/"famous name" per shop, lots of support people (c) lukewarm returns (d) revolving doors at many shops so what happened, is it something in the environment? it was the avengers back then, now it's kinda like a subpar episode of SNL maybe in another 3-5 years, the reputation of hedge funds as being ultra-exclusive places to get stratospheric returns would have completely dissipated - more like fidelity with half the returns and twice the fees
Everyone, including Buffett says that making money in the markets was way easier before. So it was more likely you'd have big names around.
"SOES" happened. DMA brokers happened. WE happened. Investors used to send orders hoping to be filled before the end of the week -- then the end of the day. Traders used to move on orders within the week and within the day -- and it was child's play to discern trends and ranges and turns. A couple of moving averages, or even a MACD, and you were way ahead of the crowd, and could suck a vig out of nearly any trade. Now, vig is left to sub-pennies, and mostly left to MMs and HFTs, who have pushed their close-to-the-market advantage to 16-core CPUs at pico-seconds of co-located signal. What happened to the rest of the money? Follow the path of the number of true DMA brokers, and their numbers of customers, and their per-trade prices -- WE happened. Exponentially.
the internet has made so that he who toot's his horn loudest is the new big name. since it's so easy to toot the internet horn we have watered down and spread out the previously concentrated big names. now everyone with a keyboard is a big name guru. i was a quant in the 80's and now everyone is a quant, so much so i removed the word from my linkedin profile pretty much for fear of using the latest buzz word. it's like ai is the new hot thing - ai was shit in the 80's and still is for dynamic data sets, works great from 0-100 where it never has to deal with new data. basically ai is over optimized junk but the new generation needs to discover that now.
Modern AI/deep learning is pretty cool. I'm using it to find patterns I like to trade manually so I don't have to type out the rules myself.
I remember interviewing at their office back in 1996. I believe they got bought by GS shortly after. They were concentrated in bunch of trend following CTAs and we all know how that went.
I think it is too competitive at firms vying for top spots and those shooting for them are unclear on how to trade well. Most gear themselves for smaller profits and do not realize the huge gains will always be longer term. Seldom if hardly any never realize the measurement Index is long term S&P-except for components within, it doesn't take trades, no fees to be paid, no decisions to be made, no data feeds. no power outages, no rollovers. I actually feel it is easier now to make a buck than when I started before computers. It is easier now also cause too many are using computers to find patterns which means the trader is getting dumber and they are not studying price action for years, they are requiring computers to find something anything to find patterns that are profitable for entry, those who know this is 1% of a system. People have become more closed minded, more lazy, they want stats on any post one discusses or they label you a fraud, I love it cause they have no ideas, no knowledge. Good traders do make very good systems that last over 15 years, no one is going to show results or speak. Many prefer to keep 100% of it and not get 20/2% and why there are fewer Monroe Trout's or Ed Seykota's?
Many compliance departments went nuts about e-messaging or forum participation for IAs handling public money in Dec of 18 when the Finra rules came into effect. I know a handful of folks who simply dropped of boards or e-messaging in general.