Hudson River Trading’s Book: Hiding in Plain Sight
“Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.” - Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum It is always fascinating to experience the fleeting juxtaposition of data and mythology. Before, there is only mythology, where almost anything is possible. And then, data enters the picture and for a brief moment they coexist until mythology dissipates and is forever changed. Students of this game are often aware of the lists of notable proprietary trading firms and other secretive trading entities, but there is rarely, if ever, any basis upon which to rank them other than the superlatives that tend to be associated with their founders and perhaps a guesstimate of headcount swagged from LinkedIn. Anyway, we just had such an experience with the development of a new model on Hudson River Trading (HRT), a noted highly-automated trading shop. In the absence of data - and pictures formed by data - we really only had mythology to go by. Now we have less mythology... So, let's add a few more pieces to solve our puzzle [...]