Ferguson Hyams Investment Management Pty Ltd is a boutique Australian global investment manager which identifies and engages high pedigree portfolio managers without geographical restriction. The company is seeking high pedigree portfolio managers that trade proprietary trading strategies in liquid markets, ideally Futures and Currencies. Mandatory Trading Experience & Investment Management Skills Minimum of 3 years verifiable trading track record that is current. Sharpe ratio above 1.5 Trading statements (on real money) that can be verified by Ferguson Hyams Investment Management. Previous experience trading institutional capital is an advantage. The proposed remuneration structure offers proprietary traders unlimited earning capacity as the company grows its funds under management. Traders with high pedigree experience and a verifiable track record will be offered a 40% share of the performance fees earned by the company. This opportunity is not a geographically limited which allows our portfolio managers to operate globally, within our proprietary risk portal. Please send your CV and a summary of your trading experience along with an overview of your defined edge in the markets your trade. Three years live trading statements must be current and made available to be considered for this role. Immediate start date.
Tells us what your edge is, which markets your edge works best on, and give us all your trades for the last 3 years. Haha, who is going to fall for that?
It doesnt say "give all your trades" . It says show the track record (probably in the form of daily returns). Any serious PM job would ask the same, along with a qualitative explanation of what you are doing.
It says "live trading statements must be made available" , to me that is clear, they want to see all your live trades
Fair enough, even though I bet just daily account values are sufficient. Its more about everybody's paranoia regarding trading secrets. Its my experience that some of the best traders freely tell you what they do (maybe not exactly, but give you an idea). Unless you are at the bleeding edge of technology, or legit found a structural inefficiency in the market (very hard to do), I think the fear of your trading rules becoming well known is overblown. Too many people assume companies are jsut trying to get trading "secrets", or maybe I'm just naive.
Look at that wording. It is another thing to watch, even if you print money for the firm. If they lose money from other strategies then they don't collect much in the way of performance fees overall. In that situation you probably wont get paid what you are owed. They just wont have the cash to pay you. Unless you the only trader they got.
I just saw it on the internet and posted it here. They are legit or not I don't know, but it looks like a fair deal and can be win-win for successful individual traders. You protect your research but they protect their risk capital and ask for trackrecords. You should as well suspect your network providers stealing your trade orders too.
Nice point … also of interest, they are asking for … These guys are certainly not alone in using minimum Sharpes as a pre-requisite for recruiting traders but imo chasing glittering past track records has always been a fools game. In fact if you take a look at Ferguson Hyams website they currently run 5 strategies of their own for which they are raising external funds … · Algorithmic Futures Strategy · Tactical Options Strategy · Multi-asset Futures Strategy · Equity Long/short Strategy · Event Driven Equity Absolute Return Strategy None of these have shown a Sharpe greater than 1.5 … in fact they average out at only 0.6. So they have been unable to achieve high Sharpes in any of their own strategies, but insist on a minimum of 1.5 for any new hires … really?
Any trader who can trade at a 1.5 sharpe can find work in just about any hedge fund. But why would they? With a Sharpe like that you could trade your own capital and crush it. Don't quote me on this but I recall somewhere around 0.6 - 0.7 being basically the average across most CTAs. If you're hitting a Sharpe of 1.0 you're outperforming a lot of people that control a ton of capital. This company's insistence on a Sharpe Ratio of 1.5 is almost comedic. I didn't believe it. Their commission structure seems suspicious as well. 40% on performance fees earned by the company? So if you are a super trader (and with a consistent Sharpe at or above 1.5 you almost certainly are) and you crush the markets you could potentially make nearly nothing if every other fund manager fails to perform? This must be a joke.
Maybe the 1.5 Sharpe is not a hard rule? Makes you think why did they put it on there in the first place though. I agree about the Sharpe ratios in general though. Sharpe is one of those numbers that needs context. I had a 2 Sharpe for a while, aka my first year trading with my current strategies. That is obviously not sustainable (which I knew at the time), and the Sharpe has come down since to levels I would expect (given my backtesting of the strategies). A long time period (5 years +, maybe a whole market cycle) with a Sharpe around 1 is very good in my opinion. The people that scoff at a 1 Sharpe are just new to this game. In fact if somebody showed me a say 2 year track record with a say 2 Sharpe and told me it will continue / that is the expectation I would be concerned. Many high Sharpe strategies are just masking the real risk, usually in the form of an "extreme" event wiping out profits (think of option / vol selling). I continually see min Sharpe ratios on job postings, and I continue to roll my eyes.