Quant insiders: retail systematic trading is a trap—get a job at a trading firm instead
PtrPomorski · x · 2026-11-08
Quant practitioner macrocephalopod lays out three hard truths: systematic trading is hard, you can't prompt your way to a profitable strategy without already knowing what you're doing, and most people capable of trading profitably for themselves would do better at a good trading firm—advice he claims saves people hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars.
paleologo offers an alternative path: park savings in passive tax-advantaged ETFs, study applied math for fun (Strang, The Model Thinker, Strogatz), then look for problems that provide value, have analytical complexity, and can repeat and scale—a trip more rewarding and more likely to make you rich than retail trading.
More from Venture
- Gary Marcus: Krispy Kreme beat Nvidia this year, OpenAI could be the WeWork of AI — GaryMarcus · 2026-11-08
- Newsletter Roundup: HubSpot on AI Software Buying, CrowdStrike AI Agent Security Deal, Anthropic's $5B Compute Spend — MirelaXhota · 2026-11-08
- Solo devs shouldn't be intimidated by billion-dollar AI funding rounds, argues founder — sven_ai · 2026-11-08
- The Cure That Kills an Industry: Why Progress Meets Resistance From Its Own Beneficiaries — r0ck3t23 · 2026-11-08
- One user spent nearly $600 in a year: a dev shows AI subscription upgrade paths — gefei55 · 2026-11-08
- Tesla to Launch More Efficient Cybercab in 2025; Analyst Sees Sub-$15k COGS at Scale — JOBhakdi · 2026-11-08