Headlands Technologies LLC Blog

Introduction There is a common misunderstanding, even among practitioners, that low-latency trading is a waste of human talent and resources that could instead go to advancing physics or curing cancer. It’s been attacked by books like Flash Boys, governments trying to pass transaction taxes, and exchanges bending to pressure by implementing speed bumps or periodic … Continue reading "Opinion: Rat…

This is the first in a series of book recommendations for new quants. We will only focus on books that quants commonly come across in their journey. Elements of Statistical Learning (ESL) is the classic recommendation for new quants, for good reason. However it’s a massive tome and many sections aren’t that useful – reflecting … Continue reading "Elements of Statistical Learning. 8/10"

In my time at Headlands Technologies, I’ve gotten the opportunity to build some utilities that have improved the ergonomics of maintaining high-performance C++ codebases. This article will give a generic overview of one of those utilities, OutOfLine. Let’s start with a motivating example. Suppose you have a system that opens a very large number of … Continue reading "OutOfLine – A Memory-Locality…

People setting out to pursue a career in the quantitative trading industry won’t always know what questions they should be asking of prospective employers. As a result, they are susceptible to making a mistake in choosing their first job. That mistake could lead to later giving up on the industry, when in fact you may … Continue reading "Successfully Starting a Career in Quant Research"

(pdf version) This summary is an attempt to shed some light on modern quantitative trading since there is limited information available for people who are not already in the industry. Hopefully this is useful for students and candidates coming from outside the industry who are looking to understand what it’s like working for a quantitative … Continue reading "Quantitative Trading Summary"