Rohit D’Souza was on vacation with his family in India in May 2008 when he got a call from Ken Griffin, founder and chief executive officer of Citadel Investment Group LLC. Griffin wanted the banker, who had just quit his job as head of equity trading and sales at Merrill Lynch & Co., to help him do something no other hedge fund had ever tried…. (Link to Full Story: Bloomberg)

Update, a day later…: Citadel Suffers Setback as D’Souza Leaves Firm After a Year

This is nothing new to the Europe but I’ve been hearing about it for a while over in the States:

A flood of U.S. firms have streamed into Europe’s carbon credit trading system; in this and other ways firms are forging ahead under the assumption that the Senate will pass a climate change bill that creates a market for trading carbon credits. By Penny Crosman

Read More… via WS&T

• AMM Quant - mid level experience, ability to drive a group
• Senior Quant Traders - Equity Prop Trading
• Quant Dev - Lead - R/S plus, C++
• Risk Quant - Equity Derivatives
• Head of App Development - execution management and order management platform
• Quant Developer - C/C++, mathematical packages (Matlab, etc), 1-2 years in finance
• FI Quant Developer - C++, treasuries a plus
• Mid/Senior Level Developer - C++/Python
• Mid Level Developer - Java/C++/Python, 1-3 years experienc

All of these roles have full descriptions that can be sent or described verbally.  These are not opportunistic submittals, rather full job specs.

As normal full additional information can be disclosed via a call and not all jobs are posted. Secondly, as amusing as I find it to get cold calls from other recruiters pretending to be candidates, please don’t waste either of our time.

• FX High Freq Traders (NY) – both with track records or pure backtests

• Equities Quant (NY) Junior and Mid-level (1-5 years) – Asset manager

• Equities Derivatives Trading (NY) – min of 5 years track record, established team with strong foundation.

• C# Junior Software Dev (Chicago) – opportunity for someone young to get into an established prop firm

• C++ Mid Level Developer (NY) - 1-2 years experience outside finance, extremely strong Unix and C++ required, top schools only.

• Commodities Quant / Quant Trader (NY) - Very unique opportunity for someone with 1+ year experience in either FX/Futures/or commodities.  Ability to run own book eventually.  Someone who is a real self starter and has a very strong background.

A couple recent articles:

HFT Does Not Create Volatility, Says Buy Sider

Don’t Set Speed Limits on Trading

High-Frequency Trading Debate Goes Well Beyond Stocks

and my favorite, finally someone said it: Goldman and High Frequency Trading

“This argument not withstanding, I doubt that Goldman is making much of its money from high frequency trading”

On a slightly related note, I’m in Chicago this week.

Please note that QuantRecruiter.com is not hosting this video.  Amazing how things have changed but nonetheless an interesting video.

Edit: Not surprising, this video has been pulled from circulation on popular video feed sites.

In recent news: Tudor Investment Calls Stock Gain a Bear-Market Rally

I signed up for an invite to Google Voice about a week back and received my invite yesterday.  I have to say that as usual Google really did a great job on the application from my quick run through.

• Commodities Quants (Bank/NY) - in addition to quant role there is the ability to run his/her own prop book
• Commodities Developers (Bank/NY)
• OMM Quant (Bank/London)
• Fixed Income Quant Dev (Asset Manager)
• Prop Tech Manager (Bank/NY) - strong C++/C# dev skills, high frequency experience.
• Entry Quant - broad range of positions with a few niche hedge funds and prop firms.  Very selective

I am too good to be true, I’ve built low, medium and ultra high frequency algorithmic quantitative statistical arbitrage strategies across all asset classes including equities, fx, rates, commodities and credit. I’ve programmed the fastest systems on earth, so fast you cant even see them, faster than the speed of light, systems are developed in Java, C#, C++++ (it’s better than C++) and connect to every electronic exchange in the known galaxy. I have an amazing track record having never lost money on a single trade in the last 5 years (though I did loose a dime down the back of the couch once). My strategy has very high capacity and can run well over a trillion dollars and still produce over 101.7% returns.

I currently am paid 100% of my P+L but think I am worth 110%, if there are recruiters out there who have clients who can offer this please get in touch but dont call me at my desk as I sit next to my boss.

A couple days ago I was forwarded this amusing profile.  Apparently either a quant or someone in our industry is tired of receiving irrelevant cold calls from new Quantitative recruiters for high frequency and in response put up this gem, this guy looks amazing and totally possible!  I’ve also noticed a few close contacts, 2 of whom I’ve placed in the past, have put on their profiles to specifically not be called because they are not currently looking.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, about one quarter of the readers of this blog are other recruiters therefore I’m careful about what I post.  That said, I will say there is some tact that goes along with our niche!  You may notice from my own profile that I have 393 connections, quite a few but not nearly as many people as I know.  Each of these connections is from our industry and none are other recruiters unless I know them personally.  I’ve even heard of recruiters creating fake profiles as pure research tools!