Morning Coffee: JPMorgan's ex-top quant with insane work ethic & crazy ideas is done at 51. Why interns look at you weirdly

When Dr. Hans Buehler left JPMorgan in 2022, it was the end of an era. Buehler spent 14 years with the bank, based out of London, and was a major figure in its electronic equities business, where he was global head of equities analytics, automation and optimization. And then, in March 2022, he quit.

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A month later, Buehler was back - as deputy-CEO of XTX Markets - the electronic market making firm with 25,000 GPUs and a passion for AI. One year on, Buehler was made co-CEO of XTX Markets alongside the ever-interesting but possibly crotchety figure of Alex Gerko, XTX founder and nature lover. 

Now, Buehler, aged just 51, is moving on again. But why? 

Ostensibly, it's because he's done with finance and wants to go back to university. Buehler, who has a PhD in financial mathematics, spent the summer of 2022 hanging out in Munich as a visiting professor, and clearly liked the vibes. Financial News reports that he quietly resigned from XTX in late June to pursue an academic career. 

This makes sense to the extent that Buehler has always been ahead of his time - at JPMorgan he pioneered the introduction of AI and a method he called "deep hedging," using machine learning to hedge options in the bank's books, instead of classical pricing models. Described by some as "crazy," Buehler himself admitted that his methods were polarizing. "Half of the people don't believe in it, the other half believe too much," he observed three years ago.

Maybe Buehler, who didn't respond to a request to comment, feels he can better develop his methods in academia. He can probably afford to walk away from finance: XTX is generous to its senior staff; in 2023 25 partners at XTX Research earned an average of £14m each.

It may also be that Buehler fancies a rest. One former academic collaborator observed three years ago that Buehler has a "pretty insane" work ethic: his does his day job by day and complex coding problems by night. He's a combination of "pure quant" and "commercial animal." On this basis, it may only be a matter of time before Buehler resurfaces elsewhere. Jane Street or Citadel Securities are surely possibilities. 

Separately, if your intern is giving you strange looks, then it's not you but them. Business Insider reports that there's something called the "Gen Z stare", which has been observed on TikTok and involves a vacant expression and slight shifting of the eyes. While it occurs, the starer will fail to respond to greetings.

While this might be considered rude, it can also be considered a buffer screen while Gen Z gather their thoughts or process the possible stupidity of the person they are interacting with. "I can't fathom what you just said," says one.

Meanwhile...

If you spent your career learning Slang at Goldman Sachs you might not be needed soon. The firm has got a new AI software engineer called Devin, which will be busy doing things like updating code written in "internal languages" to alternatives. (CNBC)

Open AI keeps poaching people from electronic trading firms. It has, for example, hired Hudson River Trading's HR and recruiting teams, including Chief People Officer Julia Villagra. "If you have somebody like Julia there, she was part of the whole ascension of Hudson River." (Business Insider)  

Investment bankers will generate less than 25% of banking revenues for the 14th quarter in a row in Q2. Analysts are implying that the year is already over for banking deals. “I think 2025 is more or less done [for investment banking]...Yes you could get a strong quarter of equity issuance in the fall, and that would help numbers. The M&A is going to be more a function of what’s been announced already for the back half of the year.” (Financial Times) 

Now that it's harder to get a visa to work in the US after graduating from a US university course, Chinese quant funds like Mingshi Investment Management and Shanghai Goku Technologies are on campus in the US trying to lure students back to China. (Bloomberg) 

India's top university graduates don't want to work in offshored investment banking teams. When they do, they only stay an average of two years. (BackofMind) 

Jane Street deposited more than $560m of what India’s markets regulator has called “illegal gains” in an escrow account to comply with the order that has temporarily banned it from Indian markets. Jane Street says it's done nothing wrong. (FT) 

Beware "paranoid attribution," where employees read negative meaning into regular workplace occurrences. Do worse snacks mean the company is struggling financially? Is a warmer office a sign that management is cutting costs on air conditioning? (Business Insider) 

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