This is not the secret sauce, but probably an implementation of a set of standard well known pricing and risk models. That's still useful, and can be expensive to develop, so thanks Goldman.
Not true. You might make an argument that this is the effect of having them together in a market, but that's not their job:
- Market maker: hang around the market offering to trade with anyone (pref retail) at a spread. Doesn't care whether TSLA is gonna be able to make all those Model 3s.
- Pension fund: make sure they can pay the liabilities that are coming due. If that can be locked in, happy to pay a bit more than fair value to do so.
- Hedge fund: make absolute returns. Buy before it goes up, sell before it goes down. Whatever form of voodoo (or skill) fulfills this is fine. This doesn't have to mean finding the right price (could just mean you guess which way it's going), though of course often it is part of the objective.
- Broker: finds people on both sides of a trade. Doesn't care terribly much except to create excitement.
- Banks: lend money/securities and offer services to all of the above. Create research to make people trade. Securitise stuff so people can trade it. Often do a bit of everything.
Source: used to run hedge funds.
Im a programmer, but on the side have made on average 150% profit in share dealing over the passed 5 years, but more importantly, a much higher return in other assets to 2 orders of magnitude higher.
My question is - would experience / gains like this - if i had proof etc - get me an interview in a fund as some type of well paid (6 figure atleast) analyst?
That being said, most of your definitions are still dependent on competitively pricing securities. A market maker who can't calculate reasonable theos won't be a market maker for long.
Hedge Fund: Convince customers to invest their money in the fund. Extract as much of it as possible through fees. Doesn't care much where the market goes, charge a fee either way, a bit more if it goes up.
At the time of Aleynikov's case, Goldman was routinely at the top of the NYSE rankings with regard to programmatic trading volume.
We're reading about how GS "will" open source some software on WSJ, it would be better to just see a blog announcement with a link to the repository.
Didn't they like completely throw the book at him by charging him under that completely insane law the Computer Fraud Act?
In particular, the claim that he was "open sourcing software he developed in a personal side project" turned out to be a self-serving fabrication. From the Second Circuit's opinion:
> Aleynikov’s last day at Goldman was June 5, 2009. At approximately 5:20 p.m., just before his going-away party, Aleynikov encrypted and uploaded to a server in Germany more than 500,000 lines of source code for Goldman’s HFT system, including code for a substantial part of the infrastructure, and some of the algorithms and market data connectivity programs.
> Aleynikov also transferred some open source software licensed for use by the public that was mixed in with Goldman's proprietary code. However, a substantially greater number of the uploaded files contained proprietary code than had open source software.
It's the high-tech version of a man accused of murdering his wife giving the excuse "I swear, I thought I was shooting at a burglar that had broken into our bedroom!"
Note also that while Aleynikov's conviction was vacated by the Second Circuit, it was because of a loophole. The Second Circuit decided that stolen source code did not count as a "stolen good" under the Economic Espionage Act. (Congress corrected that loophole the same year.)
GS benefiting from open-source doesn't imply malicious intent.
- it increases its brand awareness/respect for technical customers, potential job candidates, and business partners
- it can teach finance and CS students about basic algorithms used in the industry. In some industries, it is healthier for a company's technical edge to not be so far ahead of competitors.
- the open-source """community""" (whatever that is) can find bugs and extend the software for the benefit of GS. I highly doubt this is a motive, but it's a possibility/daydream.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/07/goldmans-secret-...
And this is why people are saying to exercise caution around this stuff!
You used the word "what" where we would normally use the word "that".
I've heard this done during speech numerous times from everyone ranging from fluent native speakers to learning nonnative speakers. Was there a specific reason you did it here?
"Aug. 12, 2015, 12:33 Goldman Sachs is going the way of Google and Facebook. The investment bank is giving away some of its trading technology to clients through open-source software, according to The Wall Street Journal...."
Am I missing something?
> In business, "vice president" refers to hierarchical position that ranges from extremely senior positions directly reporting to C-level executives (in non-financial companies), to junior non-management positions with four to 10 years of experience (in financial companies).
...
> In brokerage firms, investment banks and other financial companies, "vice president" is a seniority rank rather than denoting an actual managerial position within the company. It is a relatively junior position, usually does not denote managerial responsibilities and companies have a large number of vice presidents, perhaps as an inexpensive way for a company to recognize employees, or perhaps because of delayering when an employee can't be moved higher in the organization but still deserves recognition. In most cases, the title merely implies that someone is in a medium-seniority individual contributor role.
I work in the same industry, and my boss is a vice president (and had been a vice president for years despite becoming a manager only last year); his boss is a vice president; his boss is a managing director; his boss is a managing director; her boss is the CTO; his bosses own the company. I'm at roughly a level 4 in Google terms, and at my next promotion I can apply for VP and at the one after that I must apply for VP, regardless of whether I stay on the IC track or move to the manager track. So that should get you an idea of what "VP" means.
All of this was new to me when joining, though, and it would be nice to have it more publicly known.
Edit: After RTFA, it seems to be 2.5 things: - Crowdsourcing ideas while getting everyone to conform to their platforms - Image improvement to appear innovative - Speculating: monetization of old code that doesn't actually work anymore
He told me that according to his friend who works there and got him the interview, none of them are comfortable advertising that. They all choose to put "Sr. Software Engineer" on LinkedIn instead of their actual titles because nobody outside finance would understand why they're a VP.
The lowest level managing directors typically have several additional managing directors between them and the C level executives. In other words, you can be in charge of a 15 person unit and be called a managing director or you can be in charge of an entire division of 500 people and make as much as some fortune 500 CEOs and be called a managing director. Generally, your clients are fairly sophisticated and know exactly where you are in the totem pole.
In addition to just being a rung on the ladder, the VP title often also means that you are a corporate officer, who can enter into agreements on behalf of the company.
This might be just PR, in which case the code could be useful for some. However, they may be doing this is because they found something that they can exploit if other people are using this code. It might be nothing particularly bad for a given user, but if a big block of investors begin using code Goldman Sachs knows intimately, the market may suddenly start doing stuff that just happens to fall to Goldman Sach's advantage.
Not unlike the magic numbers the NSA suggested for various encryption schemes.
this can be an attempt at the same for the new generation. if your algo is making money and it can benefit from a mass adoption of the same strategy (or more likely they have a secret tweaked one that takes that more into account) why wouldn't they offer it in the open?
