Episode Details

Max Dama is the co-chairman of Headlands Technologies LLC, a global quantitative proprietary trading firm headquartered in Chicago, with offices in New York, Austin, London, Amsterdam and Singapore. He earned a B.A. in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, and Business from the University of California, Berkeley.

A generation of quants know Max through his notes on automated trading and on interview brain teasers.

https://work-in-progress.notion.site/Max-Dama-s-Brainteasers-Study-Guide-WIP-9eb1f4b692f241d894462ddf1ab34617
http://isomorphisms.sdf.org/maxdama.pdf

Steve and Max discuss:

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:18) - Max Dama's Early Life and Education
• (02:19) - Journey into Trading and Career Development
• (06:56) - The High-Frequency Trading Industry
• (26:42) - Academic Foundations for Trading
• (27:50) - Computer Science in Trading
• (28:57) - Insights into the Trading Industry
• (35:49) - AI and the future of HFT

Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.
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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.

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