Odds on Open

In this episode of Odds on Open, Ethan Kho sits down with Derek Pilecki, founder of Gator Capital Management, to deconstruct his 20%+ annualized track record in the financial sector. While many generalist PMs view financials as a "sleepy backwater" or overly complex, Derek explains how he extracts alpha from regional banks, brokerages, and insurance companies by identifying fundamental b...

In this episode of Odds on Open, we analyze the technical architecture of the data science layer within fundamental hedge funds. Guest Matei Zatreanu, founder of System2, discusses the tension between generative AI and the search for outlier-driven alpha. We move beyond the hype of LLMs to discuss the practicalities of expert network automation, the causal mapping of second-order macro effects, an...

This episode was filmed on Thursday, March 12, 2026. Greg Newman, founder and CEO of Onyx Capital Group and the largest liquidity provider in oil derivatives markets, on what it actually looks like to run a market-making book when liquidity breaks down entirely. What most participants misunderstand about oil vol is that the outright price — Brent, WTI — is a proxy, not the market; the real informa...

Legendary poker champion, decision scientist, and author of "Thinking in Bets," Annie Duke deconstructs the mechanics of decision-making under uncertainty, shifting the focus from high-variance outcomes to the rigor of positive expectancy and robust process. Leveraging her background in professional poker and cognitive psychology, Duke explores how loss aversion and resulting—the cogniti...

Zachary A. Levitt joins the pod to break down the architecture of a capacity-constrained multi-manager platform designed to harvest high alpha loads in niche, idiosyncratic markets. We dive deep into portfolio construction beyond the "Big Four" pod model, focusing on inverse-volatility weighting, discretionary risk overlays during regime shifts, and the mechanics of screening for relativ...

Check out Carbon Arc here: https://www.carbonarc.co/ Kirk McKeown, founder and CEO of Carbon Arc and former senior investor-facing operator across Glenview and Point72, on how alpha migrates as market structure, tooling, and competition evolve. What most investors misunderstand about “edge” is that it is rarely static and often lives in process design, information capture, and interpretation of sm...

My Substack: https://ethankho.substack.com/ Alfonso Pecatiello — known as "Alf" and founder of The Macro Compass and founder of Palinuro Capital, a macro hedge fund— joins Ethan Kho to break down the frameworks behind global macro trading, real economy money creation, and what it truly takes to build a macro hedge fund from the ground up. Alfonso Pecatiello spent years as a senior portfo...

Former Susquehanna International Group (SIG) Head Trader Andrew Courtney breaks down the reality of being a quant trader and market maker at one of the world's elite proprietary trading firms. He reveals what trading floors actually look like—multiple monitors covered with flashing numbers, signals, and price movements that traders analyze all day with zero lunch breaks and constant attention...

Sinan Xin manages an emerging markets tech hedge fund from New York, investing across China, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and beyond. In this conversation, he shares how he builds edge in some of the world's most volatile markets. We discuss: Why conviction can become bias—and how to tell the difference Building durable relationships across geographies you're not from The evolution of ed...

In this episode, hedge fund manager Alix returns to Odds on Open to tackle what he calls the most important problem facing young investors today: the complete loss of analog training skills that created the greatest investors of previous generations. Alix runs a hedge fund that deliberately avoids AI tools for analysts, believing they're "extremely dangerous" because they optimize an...

Disclaimer: This is not a financial promotion and must not be seen as advice, but only as an educational piece Cláudia Quintela has spent 25 years connecting early-stage hedge fund managers with institutional capital. She's worked across FX, macro, and systematic strategies at State Street, UBS, Morgan Stanley, and Blenheim Capital, one of the world's largest commodity managers at its peak...

In November 2025, I hosted a fireside chat at Columbia University with Deepak Gurnani, founder of Versor Investments, a $1.4 billion [1] quantitative hedge fund based in New York with offices in New York and Mumbai. Deepak spent two decades at Investcorp, where he built and led the firm’s hedge fund division. In 2013, he stepped away to found Versor with a singular goal: to build a research-driven...

Ethan Kho interviews David Orr, a former professional poker player turned hedge fund manager. They discuss David's journey from poker to founding Militia Capital, his investment philosophy, and the lessons learned from both industries. David shares insights on risk management, the importance of finding asymmetric bets, and the challenges of the hedge fund industry. He also offers advice for as...

Discover how top multi-manager hedge funds like Citadel and Millennium attract the brightest minds, the evolving talent strategies in the industry, and the unique traits that set successful candidates apart. Whether you're an aspiring finance professional or just curious about the inner workings of hedge funds, this episode offers valuable insights into the competitive landscape of financial s...

What’s the difference between prediction markets trading and equities trading? On Odds on Open, the world’s #1 prediction markets trader Domer explains how prediction markets work as a form of information-based trading, where news and signals can arrive at any moment, forcing continuous price discovery and repricing. Unlike stock markets, where returns often depend on long-term growth, valuation m...

❗ACCESS OPPORTUNITIES EXCLUSIVE TO OOO VIEWERS: https://app.youform.com/forms/e2jpsj4z ❗ How do top hedge funds actually hedge trades? At SIG, traders were often told not to hedge. Most assume elite trading firms hedge every position, but Susquehanna (SIG) built its edge by avoiding hedging when trades had positive expected value (EV). Kris Abdelmessih—who later moved into portfolio management r...

In this episode, former Tower Research and Flow Traders quant Annanay Kapila breaks down the reality of high frequency trading, HFT strategies, and top automated trading systems. He explains what quant researchers actually do inside elite firms—where world-class math talent competes in a true zero-sum market. Annanay goes deep into market making strategies, latency engineering, alpha generation, a...

Former Citadel MD Michael Watson gives a direct look inside a multi-strategy hedge fund and what it was like working under Ken Griffin. He breaks down Citadel’s pod-shop model, its high-intensity capital allocation frameworks, and how Ken built a concentration of talent across quant trading, quant research, engineering in quant, discretionary equities, Python/C++, data engineering, and alternative...

What’s it like being a trader at SIG? At Susquehanna International Group, Todd Simkin has trained some of the world’s best traders using poker strategy, probabilistic games, and decision-making under uncertainty that mirror real-world quantitative trading. In this episode, Todd breaks down how SIG teaches trading interns Bayesian updating, asymmetric information, market microstructure awareness, a...

John Knorring spent over a decade on the Goldman Sachs trading floor, leading natural gas trading through the 2000s—a period defined by trading in a financial crisis, Hurricane-driven volatility, the Amaranth blow-up analysis, and trading during 2008 when bank desks had to price massive option books overnight. He explains how bank trading desks, pit traders, handwritten tickets, and early prop tra...

How do you start a hedge fund—and where should you launch it? Daniel Xystus has done both. From Los Angeles quant to Chicago portfolio manager to CIO in Hong Kong and the Middle East, Daniel now helps new hedge fund managers navigate fund setup, regulation, and operations. We break down what it really takes to launch a hedge fund—choosing your fund domicile, building professional infrastructure, a...

How do top quantitative trading firms use generative AI?  @versorinvestments  , a $1.4B[1] quantitative investment boutique in the asset management industry, reveals how human ingenuity drives its AI-powered investment research and machine learning in finance pipeline. Partners DeWayne Louis and Nishant Gurnani explain how they combine supervised machine learning, natural language processing, and...

Doug Garber, former Citadel hedge fund analyst and Millennium Management portfolio manager, joins the show to unpack what it’s really like inside two of the world’s top multi-manager hedge funds — and how each approaches portfolio construction, risk management, and hedge fund culture. Drawing from his years working at Citadel and working at Millennium, Doug explains why Citadel operates more like...

Why do smart investors lose money? Alix Pasquet, Managing Partner of Prime Macaya Capital Management, breaks down the paradox at the heart of hedge fund investing psychology—why high IQ often hurts investors more than it helps. Drawing on decades of experience allocating to top quant funds and running capital, Alix explains how hedge fund managers fall into classic strategy mistakes, why competing...

How do you find trading edge in electricity markets? Cory Paddock, co-founder of GBE, explains how real alpha generation in power trading comes from anticipating paradigm shifts before the market sees them. In a renewable energy trading market shaped by constant regime change—coal replaced by gas, wind and solar reshaping grid topology, and data centers driving new load volatility—edge belongs to...