Perhaps you would find from this book something related to your experience. Seems many interesting comments from Amazon! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Kroijer
This is what Lars said after he closed his hedge fund and wrote two books: In other words, invest in low cost index funds!
I haven't talked about it before. I made the mistake of working for a salary as the plans for the fund were laid out, had a verbal contract (I know...). During this time I shared my trading methods which would've become the core of the fund. When the time for a written contract came, the terms had been radically changed and obviously I wasn't interested any longer as it was obvious to me that I could make more trading on my own and my work wouldn't be the property of someone else. The fund did go ahead without me but was closed in a year due to poor performance (it was up like 2% in that year). There are people out there who spend their time coming up with plans how to take advantage of traders like myself and they are well connected (lawyers etc), they know how to play the game so to speak. I have little interest in spending month or years going to court or attending bitter negotiations. I'd rather spend all this time coming up with trading ideas.
There are many Amazon.com comments on the 2 editions of this book. Writing about himself for the whole cycle from starting to closing his highly successful hedge fund business, financially. However, it's not worth for him due to causing too much his own health and family. Perhaps mainly due to his investing style, that ha had to spend so much time and effort in each individual opportunities that nobody else could easily taking over his own knowledge, connections and edge. A very good book of true story style in hedge fund, imo, probably the first of this kind. As I recalled from my reading, it seemed he did not think hedge fund operators is a worthwhile business, at least for himself. A list of pros and cons for running a hedge fund business by him. His doctor told him his health was like a 50s guy while still aged 35, a year before closing down the fund. Yes, he finally believed hedge fund could not earn more or better than the market in long run performance.
Many thanks for your story! Perhaps there should be a dedicated thread devoted to this topic for sharing the experiences among traders.
I have given some thought to peer review and collaborating with a group of traders. But the showstopper is always the same ... how do you protect your proprietary trading methods? I think it was Ben Franklin who said, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead". What was your intent when you joined this trading group and how did you reconcile sharing your IP?
It wasn't a trading group, it was a starting hedge fund. It would've been part of a larger real estate company, that's why lawyer expenses weren't an issue. I had no protection but I also kept some of the strategy details to myself. I also realized during this period that the scalability wasn't as good as I had hoped but the numbers were still respectable.
@d08: May I ask how much did the fund have as assets under management? I worked for one that had about $1B AUM, but the options market making desk where I specifically activated had only about $30M allocated. Otherwise a lot of money went into plain stocks or low-yield but safe stuff like bonds.
You can talk all you want, present tons of powerpoint slides and backtest to your hearts content. It means jack, show 10+ years of real money verifiable returns and the list of all your transactions maybe we speak. It sounds like you are putting the cart before the horse. Go trade your own capital and come back in 2026. You do not need to disclose your algos/secret recipe. All you need to do is show the results, be able to explain the process and your risk management philosophy.