Daivd Shaw is known as the “King Quant” because of his firm’s pioneering role in high-speed quantitative trading.
He is “the most intriguing and mysterious force on Wall Street”, according to Fortune magazine who made his fortune exploiting inefficiencies in financial markets with the help of state-of-the-art high-speed computer networks.
David Shaw earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego and obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1980, then became a faculty member of the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University.While at Columbia, Shaw conducted research in parallel computing with the supercomputer.
In 1986, David Shaw joined Morgan Stanley, as vice president for technology in Nunzio Tartaglia’s automated proprietary trading group. In 1988 he started his own hedge fund, “D. E. Shaw & Co.”, which employed proprietary algorithms for securities trading.
In 1994, David Shaw was appointed by President Clinton to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
In 2000, Shaw was elected to the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science served as its treasurer 2000-2010. In 2007, David Shaw was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2009, he was appointed by President Obama again to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In 2012, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and in 2014 was elected to the National Academy of Science.
David Shaw is known as the “King Quant” because of his firm’s pioneering role in high-speed quantitative trading
INVESTMENT STYLE
David Shaw is a quantitative strategist who builds proprietary algorithms for trading.
As explained on the David Shaw’s DE Shaw & Co website:
THE D. E. SHAW GROUP FOCUSES on the pursuit of attractive risk-adjusted returns for our investors. In our alternative investment strategies, this means an emphasis on uncovering hard-to-find sources of return with modest long-term correlation to traditional asset classes; we look for unique opportunities that are less exposed to competitive pressures and market crises. In our benchmark-relative strategies, we seek to use quantitative techniques to generate returns that exceed standard benchmarks and that offer diversification from conventional style factors like value, growth, size, or momentum.
The D.E. Shaw Group focuses on the pursuit of attractive risk-adjusted returns for our investors
LEARNING RESOURCES
David Shaw is a computer scientist who made billions as a top hedge fund manager, and left that to become the world’s leading authority in molecular dynamics simulations of proteins.
Traders are still trying to discover the secrets to Shaw’s proprietary algorithms, which will never be revealed.
Finance is really a wonderfully pure information-processing business – David Shaw
CONNECT WITH INVESTOR
Follow this World Top Investor via their various social media channels and read more about their background and current investment interests on their official website:
David Shaw
www.deshaw.com
