Will the battle for alpha among quant traders be decided by whoever has the best data centre? Hedge funds and algorithmic trading firms alike are hiring hardware specialists just in case. At Hudson River Trading, which has been known to let its traders spend up to $1k a day on tokens, the latest arrival in this space is a former executive of a publicly traded high-performance computing firm.
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HRT hired Harry McHugh as a systems engineer, based in Singapore according to his LinkedIn profile. He spent the last two years as chief information officer of DUG, an Australian technology firm that provides cloud-based high-performance computing services similar to those on offer by ‘neoclouds’ like CoreWeave. DUG touts a proprietary immersion cooling system that can cut data centre water usage by up to 25%.
McHugh also spent three and a half years with hardware manufacturer AMD, where he was a senior member of technical staff working on semiconductors. He joined after a previous stint at DUG, where he was head of high-performance computing.
He’ll have his work cut out for him at Hudson River Trading which, like most quant firms, has been building a colossal hardware stack. The firm has stated in job listings that it has “triple-digit petabyte-scale storage and massive CPU and GPU clusters in globally distributed data centers.” In its UK entity, HRT spent £2.4m per head on new equipment last year, roughly triple its spending on compensation. In August, Bloomberg reported that it also entered a multi-billion-dollar agreement with neocloud provider CoreWeave.
Elsewhere in Asia, Goldman Sachs has been bolstering its own electronic trading division. It hired Ross Whittaker as an MD and head of APAC algo trading. He was previously head of pan-Asian electronic execution at Citi, but left in July.
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