Quant Enthusiasts

Really grateful to be included in Future Alpha’s 20 Leaders to Follow in 2026. I’ve spent the past two years building Quant Enthusiasts and trying to make quantitative finance more visible to people interested in the field. Still pretty surreal to see my name on a list alongside people whose work I’ve followed for a long time. Thanks to everyone who put my name forward, and to the Future Alpha team for the recognition.

Oil moved back below $100 this week. The 10-year Treasury yield fell below 5% and the Nasdaq returned to record territory. At the same time, the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act by 49 votes to 50. Two days later, the CFTC sent a new crypto market-structure rulemaking to White House review. The larger structural deadline sits in Treasuries. Eligible cash-market transactions move into mandatory central clearing on 31 December 2026, with repo following on 30 June 2027. That changes the margin economics behind one of the most leveraged relative-value trades in the market. Full cross-asset breakdown in today’s newsletter: https://lnkd.in/d9NfuKRH

I am excited to announce that I will be joining Jane Street as a Quant Researcher! I will be documenting this exciting journey largely on my newsletter (which you should totally check out): https://lnkd.in/emnbGsc3

Trend-following funds were carrying roughly $300m of exposure for every 1bp move in the 10-year Treasury at the July peak. That was the highest sensitivity in UBS data going back to 1990. The Fed raised rates 25bp this week, its first hike since 2023. The 10-year traded around 5% while Brent remained above $100 after the strike on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline. CTAs are heavily short bonds and long crude. Both positions benefit from the same Gulf escalation and can reverse together if the geopolitical outlook changes. At the same time, semiconductors fell sharply on Monday while several hyperscalers rallied as the market repriced the AI capex outlook. Full breakdown in today's newsletter: https://lnkd.in/dPzGButG

Multi-strategy hedge funds added roughly $500bn of capital over the past year. That is about 25% growth. Headcount at the same firms increased by only 10% to 11%. That gap between capital and people explains a large part of the hiring market right now. Millennium alone has $22bn of investor commitments due on 1 October. Only $2bn is called immediately, with the rest available for deployment over the next four years. Average multi-strategy leverage sits near 645%. Applied to $500bn of additional capital, that is roughly $3.2tn of leveraged exposure that ultimately needs teams behind it. The hiring is also concentrated. Commodities, short-duration credit and systematic rates are growing. Equity long/short is flatter, while Asia is where several firms are still adding headcount most aggressively. The interesting part is that performance is not driving this. Citadel is up 12.1% this year. Millennium 8.2%. Balyasny 0.5%. The S&P 500 is up more than 12%. So the 2026 hiring cycle is being driven by capital deployment rather than unusually strong returns. With pass-through fees now common across multi-manager platforms, firms can keep adding people even when net performance is only average. Full breakdown in today’s piece: https://lnkd.in/d3je4xJj

Hedge funds now hold roughly $2tn of US Treasuries, about 7% of the market. A large part of that exposure sits behind leveraged cash-futures basis trades financed through repo. Today the Fed raised rates by 25 basis points for the first time since 2023. That matters because higher repo costs reduce the carry on trades built around spreads of only a few basis points. August was also quiet across the large pod shops. Citadel gained 0.1%, Millennium was flat and Balyasny lost 0.7%. That leaves Balyasny at 0.5% for 2026, against much stronger year-to-date returns at several large peers. At the same time, OpenAI has ruled out a 2026 IPO while Anthropic moves closer to the public markets. Full breakdown in today’s piece: https://lnkd.in/dYEE_iga

Goldman’s US high-beta momentum basket fell roughly 37% in July. The S&P 500 still reached a record close in August. That gap says more about quant risk than another model benchmark. Too many books held similar exposures at similar leverage. When the factor turned, capacity and execution mattered more than forecast quality. The durable skills are still experimental design, market impact, risk decomposition, data provenance and knowing when a relationship has stopped holding. The tools will keep changing. Those constraints won’t. Full breakdown in today’s piece: https://lnkd.in/dfcBp6DU

Citadel had signed roughly 70% of its internship offers by mid-October last cycle. Its application portal stayed open into December. That difference between an open application and an available seat matters throughout quant recruiting. Jane Street opened its Summer 2027 roles on 12 July 2026. Last cycle, interview capacity had filled by late October even though applications remained open. Point72 opened the UK cycle on 3 March 2026. Optiver's Amsterdam programme for 2028 graduates closed applications on 1 January 2026. Meet Millennium in Singapore closed registration on 25 February 2026 for a programme feeding into the 2027 internship cycle. Experienced hires face a different timing constraint, with some senior PM restrictions reaching 12 to 18 months. The full article maps recruiting dates, workshops and lateral timelines across the major quant regions. Read the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/d5WRDE7t

Quant funds lost 1.4% on 19 August while the S&P 500 closed 0.21% higher. Two events hit systematic books within hours. Treasury doubled its long-end buyback limits at 8:32am, pushing the 30-year yield down roughly nine basis points before the open. Then Moderna closed 176.97% higher on Phase 3 melanoma data, trading 185.1 million shares against a 9.6 million three-month average. Morgan Stanley’s pure momentum index fell more than 4% while the broader market rose. The positioning had been building for months. Goldman placed AI momentum at the 100th percentile of its five-year range in May. Read the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/dXQ44mMM