> Among the CEOs of Wall Street’s key firms, Zhao has kept an unusually low profile.<p>those glossy photos taken by none other than Bloomberg (for the “article” perhaps?) just screams “unusually low profile.”
This looks like a purposeful distraction from Citadel’s cash cow of “payment for order flow”, which essentially allows them to cache orders at prices delivered to consumers less profitable than what they realize when matching at slightly different times, advantageous to Citadel, from their cache. Consumers using Robinhood famously are handing profit to Citadel, and the Robinhood founders[edit]/shareholders. They kick back a fraction of their profit to ensure apathetically timed orders keep being funneled through Citadel.
> his class received two coveted tickets to take a test to enter a prestigious math olympiad. One naturally went to Zhao, the top student, who promptly lost it. No need to worry, he told his father, he didn’t want to go, and if necessary he could ask the school for the other kid's ticket. His dad wouldn’t have it.<p>Enough said about the ethics of this guy.
This was posted 4 days ago. Unfortunately, people didn’t have much to say then either.<p>The idea that math can effectively be used to “beat the market” seems like a fascinating subject where few want to divulge the secrets. Math has been used for decades:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beat-Market-Scientific-Stock-System/dp/0394424395" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Beat-Market-Scientific-Stock-System/d...</a><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/073521798X" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0...</a><p>One idea that does come up is reversion toward the mean, but few details are offered.
I think this is the first time I've heard of a successful long-term career, and general life-fufillment from one of these outlier prodigies that are doing difficult university degrees in their early teens or younger. Terence Tao's another one, and in the past there's plenty, i.e. Mozart, John von Neumann etc.<p>But, I typically hear of the other extreme these days - child prodigies that struggle to fit into society and end up underemployed and neurotic. Maybe its just a selection bias (its not newsworthy to report on fufilled, grown-up child-prodigies doing their 10th postdoc in knot theory)...
The Big Short: "Look at my quant!"<p><a href="https://youtu.be/FoYC_8cutb0" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/FoYC_8cutb0</a>
My realist mind wonders what kind of risk assessment and oversight is being done on Citadel's side considering they are a 'strategic' target underpinning the US economy in many respects.<p>Its a nice paid piece by Citadel, but really what do we know about what this person's contributions have been?<p>From what I've heard, you don't make it very far in China without going through some form of struggle session at some point.<p>The article doesn't even address the elephant in the room (which is China). Making this soft propaganda.<p>This line of thought makes one wonder if the word prodigy aptly describes his capabilities (or maybe its something else). This is all speculation of course, but it makes you wonder given how egregious China has been about violating sovereignty and laws lately.<p>I mean opening up a clandestine police station on US soil in NY for the purpose of going after Chinese dissidents and other US Citizens of Chinese descent? You can't be much more egregious in violating sovereignty.<p>What kind of risk is there to the financial system if Citadel, overnight, could no longer transact business because the keys of the kingdom were given to a prodigy to make money.<p>Sleeper agents are not an unknown thing in clandestine services. I seriously hope the guy was properly vetted for what its worth.<p>[Ref Link for NY Police Station](<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/40-officers-china-s-national-police-charged-transnational-repression-schemes-targeting-us" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/40-officers-china-s-national-...</a>).<p><a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-illegal-overseas-police-station-chinese-government" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-illega...</a>