From Inside a Hedge Fund: Revelations From Insiders

来自对冲基金内部：内部人士的爆料

Hedge funds are the most off-limits financial institutions doing their best to keep the ways of making money off the competitors' radar. Generally, what happens within a fund, stays there. Former and current fund managers, traders, and analysts protect their portfolios and prevent data leaks.

对冲基金是最讳莫如深的金融机构，它们竭力让赚钱之道避开竞争对手的耳目。通常来说，基金内部发生的事，只留在内部。前现任基金经理、交易员和分析师都会保护自己的投资组合，防止数据泄露。

Some bits and pieces of insider information about the inner workings of hedge funds can usually be found on imageboards, as well as deep within Reddit and Quora. Here we have collected some interesting facts about what is happening in hedge funds based on open sources.

关于对冲基金内部运作的零碎内幕信息，通常能在贴图论坛、Reddit 和 Quora 的深处找到。这里我们根据公开信息，收集了一些关于对冲基金动态的有趣事实。

“Gods and Slaves”: Ordinary Fund Employees Have 100% Risk, 5% Profit

“神与奴隶”：普通基金员工承担100%风险，只拿5%利润

Traders and analysts working for funds should often make risky, non-obvious, and sometimes seemingly absurd decisions that defy explanation, especially when trying to justify them to clients.

为基金工作的交易员和分析师经常需要做出高风险、非常规、有时甚至看似荒谬的决定，这些决定难以解释，尤其是在试图向客户解释时更是如此。

This was noted by Reddit user dascarescu, who provided moderators proofs of working in a hedge fund management company.

Reddit 用户 dascarescu 提到了这一点，他向版主提供了在一家对冲基金管理公司工作的证明。

...You need to invest a lot in hand holding and explaining to people you know what you're doing - especially when you take on a contrarian trade (like the Greek REITS we are buying) that everyone thinks is insane...And especially if it drops after you buy it, since it's very hard to time the bottom on these things - you need to make sure you are right, and have the stamina to hold the position until it goes to a good sales price.

……你需要花大量时间去安抚客户，并向他们解释你清楚自己在做什么——尤其是当你进行逆向操作时（比如我们正在买入的希腊房地产投资信托基金），所有人都觉得这简直是疯了……而且如果买入后价格下跌就更难熬了，因为很难精准判断底部——你必须确保自己是对的，并且有足够的耐力持有头寸，直到能以好的价格卖出。

There are no guarantees for small fund employees whose income directly depends on the performance of the entire fund. A good year can easily be followed by a loss-making one slashing incomes of even successful employees who have fulfilled their plans.

对于普通基金员工来说，他们的收入直接取决于整个基金的表现，毫无保障。一个好年头之后很可能跟着一个亏损年，即使那些完成了计划指标的优秀员工，收入也会大幅缩水。

According to Laurent Bernut, Former Analyst at Fidelity and Ward Ferry Management:

据富达和 Ward Ferry Management 前分析师 Laurent Bernut 称：

...HF eat what they kill. There is no guarantee there, no safety net. ...In small hedge funds, there are only 2 types of employees: gods, the partners and slaves the rest. Regular employees have 100% of the risk and 5% of the upside. In the 2nd HF, after the 800K bonus, we had a down year. I had a spectacular one but got paid a pittance. The principal kept his 2% of the 2–20 for himself.

……对冲基金是自负盈亏的，没有保障，没有安全网。……在小型对冲基金里，只有两类员工：神（合伙人）和奴隶（其余人）。普通员工承担100%的风险，只分得5%的收益。在我待过的第二家对冲基金，拿了80万美元奖金后，我们迎来了一年亏损。我那年业绩非常出色，但只拿到一点可怜的收入。合伙人则把2%管理费和20%业绩提成中的2%管理费全部留给自己。

Retired Investors are Unable to Make Profit, While Managers Suffer from Burnout Caused by Broken Promises

退休投资者难以获利，而基金经理因承诺落空而心力交瘁

Working for a hedge fund is definitely not suitable for professionals who evaluate their work in terms of ethics, public duty, and morality. Phil Lord, Managing Partner at Vezno Capital, says that most investors bring their retirement savings bringing in another stress factor for decision-makers:

对于以道德、公共责任和良知来衡量自己工作价值的专业人士来说，在对冲基金工作绝非合适之选。Vezno Capital 管理合伙人 Phil Lord 表示，大多数投资者带来的是他们的退休积蓄，这给决策者增添了另一层压力：

Most accredited investors aren’t jetsetting billionaires. They’re regular people who need the 1–2M they saved up to retire. They worked their whole lives for that money, sacrificed time with their kids and friends. Lose the money, and you ruin their lives.

大多数合格投资者并不是满世界飞的亿万富翁，而是普通人，他们需要靠攒下的100万到200万美元来养老。他们一辈子都在为这笔钱奋斗，牺牲了陪伴孩子和朋友的时间。如果亏掉这笔钱，你就毁了他们的生活。

It is no secret that the hedge fund performance has decreased significantly after the crisis of 2008, and the income of investors has fallen as well. According to Tom Groves, who has marked his Quora account as a “hedge fund partner,” it is easy to start hating what you do due to the inability to achieve the desired return for an investor:

众所周知，2008年金融危机之后，对冲基金业绩大幅下滑，投资者的收益也随之下降。据在 Quora 账户标注为“对冲基金合伙人”的 Tom Groves 称，由于无法为投资者实现理想的回报，你会很容易开始厌恶自己所做的工作：

I actually retired because I hated it. I hated the feeling of not being able to give investors the returns they wanted… ...I hated most of all the fact that I felt like I could do "smart" things and guarantee failure, or take "dumb" risks that were bad for virtually everyone else (my partners, my investors, society in general).

我实际上就是厌恶才退休的。我厌恶那种无法给投资者带来他们想要的回报的感觉……最让我厌恶的是，我觉得自己可以做些“聪明”的事却注定失败，或者冒些“愚蠢”的风险，而这些风险对几乎所有人（我的合伙人、投资者乃至整个社会）都不利。

Tom also notes that working in a hedge fund is often accompanied by a toxic atmosphere and aggressive colleagues. This is why many get disappointed and quit. Tom notes that after leaving the hedge fund, he took up blogging and painting.

Tom 还指出，在对冲基金工作常常伴随着有毒的工作氛围和咄咄逼人的同事，这也是许多人失望离职的原因。Tom 说，离开对冲基金后，他开始写博客和画画。

Funds Cut Traders in Favor of Quantum Tools

基金裁撤交易员，转向量化工具

Fund managers can lay off traders if robots prove their worth in choosing stocks. As noted by an anonymous Reddit user, despite the fact that some fund partners do not fully trust quantum methods and question algorithmic trading, their fund may become 100% quantum in the future:

如果机器人能在选股中证明自己的价值，基金经理就会裁掉交易员。据一位匿名 Reddit 用户称，尽管一些基金合伙人不完全信任量化方法，也对算法交易存有疑问，但他们的基金未来可能会完全量化：

I think quant is going to continue to dominate and if you have the desire and ability would encourage you to pursue a PhD in a math, science or comp sci field.

我认为quant将继续占据主导地位，如果你有这个愿望和能力，它将鼓励你去攻读数学，科学或经济领域的博士学位。

Cameron E. Wild, former Vice President of Millennium Management with 17 years of trading experience, sums up career difficulties faced by traders leaving a hedge fund.

拥有17年交易经验、曾任 Millennium Management 副总裁的 Cameron E. Wild 总结了离开对冲基金的交易员所面临的职业困境：

After 8 years in the industry and 6 years as a hedge fund trader I couldn’t get another job. Though I didn’t try that hard since I was sick of it all (burnout). Technology is a massive destroyer of trading jobs.

在这个行业干了8年、做了6年对冲基金交易员之后，我找不到别的工作。不过我也没太努力去找，因为我已经受够了（身心俱疲）。技术是交易岗位的巨大杀手。

Cameron also confirmed that some funds set a goal to rid the trading process of the human factor within five years.

Cameron 还证实，一些基金设定了在五年内消除交易过程中人为因素的目标。

Ready-made Software is Gradually Replacing Custom Applications and Excel

现成软件正逐渐取代定制应用和 Excel

Hedge funds still use custom applications (for example, the ones developed in C++) created for specific tasks. According to Scott Gosnell, Excel functionality remains ubiquitous.

对冲基金仍在使用为特定任务而开发的定制应用（例如用 C++ 编写的应用）。据 Scott Gosnell 称，Excel 的功能仍然无处不在：

I have yet to see a firm that doesn’t take Excel out for a spin every day for basic modeling… Sometimes, the fancy prop models run on whatever software it is that the most junior analysts know how to run.

我还没见过哪家公司每天不用 Excel 来做基础建模的……有时候，那些花哨的自营模型运行的软件，正是资历最浅的分析师们所熟悉的那些。

Nevertheless, fund managers are currently opting for the market of ready-made software solutions allowing them to combine the experience of a development team with their own resources. For example, MetaTrader 5 for hedge funds works in conjunction with the powerful MQL5 algorithmic trading community and MQL5 Cloud Network resources allowing users to speed up testing strategies from a few days to 15 minutes.

然而，目前基金经理们正转向市场现成的软件解决方案，这样可以将开发团队的经验与自身资源相结合。例如，面向对冲基金的 MetaTrader 5 与强大的 MQL5 算法交易社区及 MQL5 云网络资源协同工作，帮助用户将策略测试时间从几天缩短至15分钟。

Richard Matthews, Ph.D. Computer Science and Engineering, notes that buying ready-made software enables fast and flexible fund structure deployment, as well as reduces the budget for creating an IT team:

计算机科学与工程博士 Richard Matthews 指出，购买现成软件能够快速灵活地部署基金架构，同时也能减少组建 IT 团队的预算：

…Buying software from various quantitative trading software firms (like Backstop, Dynamo, ect) has the advantages of being fast to deploy because it's a ready made package and doesn't require extensive in house testing. Building software takes more time, more effort, and frequently the hiring of a team of quant developers.

……从各种量化交易软件公司（如 Backstop、Dynamo 等）购买软件，优势在于部署快速，因为是现成软件包，不需要大量内部测试。而自行开发软件则需要更多时间、更多精力，通常还要招聘一支量化开发团队。