Interview with Morgan Slade - Chat with Traders Episode 131

If you are a regular listener, you’ll remember that I actually had Andy Kershner on a few podcast episodes ago. Close to the end of that interview, he briefly talked about CloudQuant, a cloud based alfo development platform and fun, a subsidiary of Kershner Trading Group.

Well, I couldn’t have timed it better myself, but today’s guest in the podcast is Morgan Slade, the CEO of CloudQuant since 2016. Before, Morgan was a trader and portfolio manager for twenty years. He’s worked at numerous prominent firms and funds. I won’t go over all the places he’s worked for, but some of them include Allston Trading, Citadel, Millburn Ridgefield, and Merrill Lynch.

In today’s episode, Morgan talks about why he believes the common approach to strategy development might be counter intuitive. In its place, he offers an alternative three step formula. We also spend a good amount of time chatting about how machine learning can fit into a trader’s toolbox.

If you’ve never heard of machine learning before, no worries. Morgan actually does an excellent job explaining all the technical terms in an easily digestible way.

Let’s get started.

What’s Covered in This Interview:

How large institutions and funds are able to put on $100 million positions, including how to work orders in the market, structure trades as well as handle market impact.
Why Morgan feels that that common approaches to strategy development doesn’t necessarily work, and the three step formula that does.
A simple explanation of how traders use data science and machine learning, as well as an example of how machine learning can improve existing strategies.