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<ul><li><keyword id="248051" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ashish-Bhasin" source="Orion">Ashish Bhasin</keyword> CEO APAC, and Chairman India, <keyword id="180259" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="dentsu" source="Orion">Dentsu</keyword> International has retired.</li><li>In India, <keyword id="11986609" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="peter-huijboom" source="Orion">Peter Huijboom</keyword> will continue his interim, day-to-day leadership of the business with the India leadership team.</li></ul>After heading the company for over 13 years, Ashish Bhasin, CEO APAC, and Chairman India, Dentsu International has put down his papers to pursue personal interests.<br /><br />Bhasin said in a statement, "I have had a wonderful 13+ years and have enjoyed leading dentsu India and dentsu APAC. I am very pleased to announce that the company has kindly agreed to my request of early retirement. I have had the honour of leading some of the best people and the best teams in the world. I thank you all for giving me the massive support you always have given. I have also been lucky to have very supportive bosses and colleagues and am thankful to Dentsu for so many things.:<br /><br />His statement also revealed that he has obtained admission for the Harvard Advanced Management Program and he hopes to be able to complete that next year.<br /><br />denstu's official statement announcing Bhasin's retirement read, "We will announce a successor in due course. To manage this transition, <keyword id="324628" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="simon-jones" source="Orion">Simon Jones</keyword>, CFO APAC &amp; Belli Mathanda, COO APAC will work closely with our global CEO, <keyword id="1723885" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="wendy-clark" source="Orion">Wendy Clark</keyword>, who will have a greater focus on the region during this time supported by the APAC Executive team.<br /><br />This strong team is well placed to continue the positive transformation underway in the region as we simplify how we operate and bring together our leading capabilities in service of our clients in Creative, Media and CXM to realise our global ambition to be the most integrated agency network in the world.<br /><br />In India, Peter Huijboom will continue his interim, day-to-day leadership of the business with the India leadership team, while we are in the final stages of our search and appointment of a new CEO in India."<br /><br />dentsu had announced its transformation and as a result, there have been a number of senior leadership resignations in the last few months. Bhasin's retirement announcement comes months after <keyword id="7491447" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="anand-bhadkamkar" source="Orion">Anand Bhadkamkar</keyword>, CEO of Dentsu India also put down his papers. There have been a flurry of resignations since the agency network announced its accelerated transformation process. <br />

Ashish Bhasin retires from dentsu, to pursue personal interests

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Police are investigating following a "minor explosion" at Southgate Tube station in London, the Metropolitan Police said on Tuesday.</p><p>It comes after a suspicious package was discovered at the North London station.</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/SimonJonesNews/status/1009156067551522819">BBC journalist Simon Jones reported on Twitter that</a> a "small number of people" were treated for injuries at the scene.</p><p>"Police were called at 1903hrs on Tuesday, 19 June, to reports of an explosion and people running at Southgate underground station," The Metropolitan Police said in a statement.</p><p>"Met officers remain at the scene along with colleagues from British Transport Police, London Fire Brigade and London Ambulance Service. Cordons are in place and the station is closed.</p><p>"Enquires are ongoing to establish the cause of the reported explosion, which appears to have been minor. We are not aware of any serious injury."</p><p><em>This story is developing...</em></p><div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/economist-weighted-voting-could-help-save-us-democracy-2018-5">This top economist has a radical plan to change the way Americans vote</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Police investigating 'minor explosion' at Southgate Tube station in London

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="1036616" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="One-Direction">One Direction</keyword> will celebrate their 10th anniversary on July 23, 2020.</li><li>For months, the group's members have been hinting at a reunion. </li><li><keyword id="1394542" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Liam-Payne">Liam Payne</keyword> has been the most outspoken about the anniversary and said that he's been in communication with the other band members. </li><li>In April, the singer told The Sun that "there's a number of different things that we are all working on to try and make happen and people are forwarding emails around."</li></ul><p><a href="https://www.insider.com/category/one-direction">One Direction's</a> 10th anniversary is coming up on July 23, 2020, and fans might be in for some surprises. </p><p>The British-Irish band was formed in 2010 through the UK reality TV show "The X Factor." Originally comprised of <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/niall-horan">Niall Horan</a>, <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/zayn-malik">Zayn Malik</a>, <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/liam-payne">Liam Payne</a>, <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/harry-styles">Harry Styles</a>, and <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/louis-tomlinson">Louis Tomlinson</a>, the group became a global hit.</p><p>One Direction's popularity spawned <a href="https://www.insider.com/most-popular-boy-band-song-every-year-2018-3">chart-topping songs</a> like "What Makes You Beautiful" (with an accompanying <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJO3ROT-A4E">music video</a> that has amassed more than 1 billion views on YouTube), tons of merchandise, (like perfumes, dolls, and singing toothbrushes), and sold-out shows around the world. </p><p>The band released four studio albums between 2011 and 2014, plus an additional one ("Made in the A.M.") following Malik's departure in March 2015. One Direction announced their hiatus months later, in August.  </p><p>Some members of 1D have recently spoken about coming together for their upcoming anniversary, so <a href="https://www.insider.com/">Insider</a> has rounded up everything you need to know about the highly-anticipated reunion. </p><h2>In February 2020, Tomlinson told 'BBC Breakfast' that a reunion was 'inevitable'</h2><p><div type="image" title="one direction performing august 2015" height="1200" width="1600" msid="75302329" hostid="261"></div></p><p>"I'll give you the answer I give everyone else: It's inevitable," Tomlinson, who was on the show to promote his debut solo album titled "Walls," <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a30747907/louis-tomlinson-bbc-breakfast-interview/">said</a>.</p><p>"I don't know when, we don't know when," he added. "I think we'd be stupid not to get back together."</p><h2>Horan tried to shut down reunion speculation during his interview with the 'Zach Sang Show'</h2><p>The <a href="https://youtu.be/IHeoa-T3PJY">interview</a> was released in mid-March and when questioned about the band, the "Small Talk" singer said: "No, we've got nothing planned. I'm sure we'll meet up, but there's nothing planned for it."</p><h2>Styles also played coy about the anniversary during interviews </h2><p><div type="image" title="harry styles met gala 2019" height="1714" width="2286" msid="75302334" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Styles' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq9cEOM8VOM">interview</a> with the "Zach Sang Show" was done remotely and released in early April, amid the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders.</p><p>When asked if he had plans for the big day, Styles said: "Will we still be inside? I'm hoping not. That will be a very emotional day, I'm sure."</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu6cZjTDnYM">Sirius XM interview</a> shared days later, the "Kiwi" singer was asked if he'd consider a Zoom reunion with 1D and he said, "I don't know if that's the reunion that we've had in mind. I don't know if that would be the way to do it. I'll have a quick whip-round."</p><h2>During Horan's 2020 'Carpool Karaoke' segment with James Corden, the singer assuredly said that 1D would reunite</h2><p><div type="image" title="niall horan carpool karaoke " height="1558" width="2872" msid="75302337" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Horan, who was promoting his <a href="https://www.insider.com/niall-horan-heartbreak-weather-album-review-first-listen-2020-3">second solo album titled "Heartbreak Weather,"</a> took a lie detector test and was asked: "Do you actually think that One Direction will get back together.</p><p>The "No Judgment" singer <a href="https://www.insider.com/niall-horan-carpool-karaoke-one-direction-lie-detector-video-2020-3">answered without hesitation</a>, saying, "Yes."</p><p>It's unclear when the episode was filmed, but it was released in mid-March as part of Horan's week-long "Late Late Show" takeover. Horan's fast response, which was deemed truthful based on the lie detector test, implied that perhaps he was already aware of a 1D reunion in the works. </p><p>The prior month, Horan also told <a href="https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2020/0207/1113364-niall-horan-one-direction-would-be-mad-not-to-reform/">RTÉ Entertainment</a> that they'd "be absolutely ridiculous not to reform the band. We haven't really spoken about the "whens" but we do know we will. We have all said individually that we will and I think it would be stupid if we didn't."</p><h2>Payne sent friends into a frenzy in April, when he told The Sun that he and the guys of 1D were communicating about how to mark the anniversary</h2><p><div type="image" title="one direction december 2015" height="1946" width="2594" msid="75302344" hostid="261"></div></p><p>"We've all been speaking together a lot over the last few weeks which has been really nice," the "Stack It Up" singer <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/662316/one-direction-reunion-liam-payne-confirms/">said</a> to the publication via a virtual chat. "To hear a lot of people's voices and seeing old content and different things that we haven't seen for a long time or never seen before, it's very interesting."</p><p>Payne added: "There's a number of different things that we are all working on to try and make happen and people are forwarding emails around."</p><h2>According to fans, the 1D members and the band's main account all refollowed Malik on Twitter</h2><p><div type="image" title="one direction american music awards november 2014" height="2024" width="2698" msid="75302351" hostid="261"></div></p><p>People took it as a sign that perhaps Malik would be included in the anniversary celebration. The Twitter activity also sparked hashtags like #OneDirection2020 and #OneDirectionReunion.</p><h2>In April, Page Six reported that the band members were considering a few ways to celebrate the milestone</h2><p>The publication <a href="https://pagesix.com/2020/04/13/one-direction-secretly-working-on-reunion-project/">said</a> that the group brainstormed ideas like a TV special or a new single, but not a tour — which makes sense considering that all the members have solo careers.</p><p>Fans have also speculated that a new 1D documentary will be released, following comments <a href="https://www.iheart.com/content/2020-01-04-liam-payne-seemingly-confirms-one-direction-doc-for-bands-10th-anniversary/">reportedly made by Payne during an interview with City Times</a>. </p><h2>Payne went on to be questioned by Corden and was fairly tight-lipped because he's 'not allowed to say much'</h2><p><div type="image" title="liam payne late late show april 2020" height="1414" width="1885" msid="75302356" hostid="261"></div></p><p>"I'm not allowed to say too much obviously, because I'd be giving it away," Payne <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e33iFt2ozE">said</a> during a virtual appearance on "The Late Late Show" with "Memories" collaborator Alesso in April. "But we've been speaking a lot more at the moment. I think we're all feeling that that 10 year is a very special moment."</p><p>He continued: "I had a beautiful FaceTime with Niall, who I hadn't spoken to in a long time, and speaking with Louis. It's been really nice, it's a nice moment."</p><h2>Payne went on Instagram Live with Alesso and implied that Malik won't be part of whatever celebration is in the works</h2><p>Payne told the DJ that he spoke to Horan via FaceTime and said that most of the band is currently in London.</p><p>"We've been trying to arrange the first group FaceTime at the moment," he <a href="https://twitter.com/m2rni/status/1251991730020216833">said</a>. </p><p>"You can come and fill in for Zayn," Payne told Alesso. "Join the band."</p><p>The singer also said that Tomlinson scolded him to speaking too much about the reunion.</p><p>"I can't say too much," Payne <a href="https://twitter.com/realdailypayne/status/1251982425405698050">said</a>. "Louis told me off for revealing a little bit about our plans the other day."</p><h2>The following day, Horan was joined by Payne on his Instagram Live</h2><p>Horan told Payne that he spoke to Tomlinson a few days prior in a WhatsApp group chat. Then Payne joked about the trio's failed attempt at a FaceTime.</p><p>"I mean, it's so funny," Horan said. "We can never get anyone together even though we're all doing nothing. Even though I know for a fact Louis' just sitting home smoking cigarettes and drinking beers. I was doing the same yesterday."</p><h2>Later that day, Payne participated in an interview and downplayed the reunion</h2><p>"We've been talking a lot more, let's say," Payne said during an <a href="https://play.acast.com/s/smallzy/46145407-4333-4e0b-86a5-64f326815546">interview</a> for "Smallzy's Surgery." "</p><p>The lines of communication are a lot more open but reunion wise I don't see anything happening right now," he said.</p><h2>Eagle-eyed fans have noticed more suspicious activity online that have given them hopes for a 1D reunion</h2><p>In January, fans <a href="https://twitter.com/starrygleam/status/1214222132076568581">realized</a> that One Direction's <a href="http://www.onedirectionmusic.com/gb/home">official site</a> was reactivated. Several <a href="https://twitter.com/onedirection/lists">lists</a> (like one titled "One Direction Day VIPs) have also appeared on the band's Twitter account, but it's unclear when the lists were created and made public. </p><p>And as pointed out by <a href="https://twitter.com/SiriusXMHits1/status/1252367784123629571">SiriusXMHits1</a> and fans online, the number of Twitter users that the band's Twitter account is following keeps changing. People have said that they've <a href="https://twitter.com/harryisgxlden/status/1252632600222498816">seen 1D ads on YouTube</a>, too.</p><p>Fans also <a href="https://twitter.com/1Dthreads1/status/1250649300549488641">noticed</a> that 1D's profile photo on Apple <keyword id="6354530" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="music">Music</keyword> has switched to a photo of the original five members, rather than just Horan, Payne, Styles, and Tomlinson. </p><p>In addition, Payne continues to be nostalgic about his 1D days. </p><p>The singer posted a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6TGp7Tyic">video</a> on YouTube in early April titled "Memories," in which he watched old One Direction videos and reacted to them. </p><p>To celebrate Easter shortly after, the singer posted a <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@liampayne/video/6814889193001602310">video</a> on TikTok with the caption: "Hope you're all staying safe. Really missing all my friends and family at this time."</p><p>The video included photos of Payne with friends, collaborators, and family members. The final image was a photo of the 1D members hugging each other. </p> <h2>Payne said that Tomlinson threatened to egg his home if he continues sharing more details</h2><p>"I can't tell you any plans because I think Louis will actually kill me at this point because I kind of let the cat out of the bag about the anniversary and whatever else," Payne said in an <a href="https://7news.com.au/sunrise/entertainment/louis-tomlinson-told-liam-payne-off-for-spilling-one-direction-reunion-plans-c-994020">interview with "Sunrise.</a>" "He actually told me off on text message. He said if I do it again he's going to egg my house." </p><p>Payne added: "The lines of communication are back open a lot more again, I'd say."</p><h2>Horan appeared to do damage control, denying a 1D reunion during an Instagram Live</h2><p>"I get asked this quite a lot, so I've got a good answer coming here," he said during a virtual interview with Claude Harmon III for Cobra Puma Golf UK's Instagram account.</p><p>"There's just been a lot of talk about it, but no, there's no reunion and such," Horan said. "We've just been talking a bit more recently."</p><p>As many fans have pointed out, this wouldn't be the first time a band member has denied a reunion that ended up happening.</p><p>Fall Out Boy's <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/1558303/pete-wentz-qa-why-fall-out-boys-reunion-needed-to-be-a-secret">Pete Wentz denied that his group would get back together during a three-year hiatus, but they returned with new music in 2013</a>. And in 2019, Joe Jonas caused a frenzy when he revealed that My Chemical Romance would be reuniting after he heard the band rehearsing next door to the Jonas Brothers in New York. Jonas let the secret slip during an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlCF0uNzVy8&amp;t=4st=4s">interview with KISS FM UK</a>, but <a href="https://www.stereogum.com/2052498/my-chemical-romance-guitarist-frank-iero-responds-to-joe-jonas-brothers-reunion-rumor/news/">MCR guitarist Frank Iero denied it</a>. Sure enough, the group <a href="https://twitter.com/MCRofficial/status/1207909921930371072">announced their reunion in December 2019</a>. </p><h2>On July 1, 2020 Payne further teased a reunion by sharing a video of himself virtually reuniting with Styles </h2><p>Payne posted the video on <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@liampayne/video/6844565473795837189">TikTok</a> and there appeared to be some technical difficulties on Styles' end. Payne jokingly said that it was "getting weird now."</p><p>"I'll speak to you later," he said before the video ended.  </p> <h2>Public relations company Simon Jones PR said that the 10th-anniversary celebration will include a new 1D site and a special video</h2><p>Among the interactive content planned for the occasion, the company <a href="http://www.simonjonespr.com/news/2020/7/15/celebrate-10-incredible-years-ofnbsponenbspdirectionnbspthis-month">said</a> that fans can expect "a special '10 Years of One Direction' website" while will "take the form of a timeline charting the history of the group, from the first audition right up to the start of their hiatus. It will host an archive of music videos, artwork, TV performances, behind-the-scenes and rarely-seen content."</p><p>Fans can also expect a new video on YouTube, recapping standout moments from the band's career, plus the release of "rare songs, remixes, live recordings, and acoustic versions of tracks."</p><ul class="read-more-links"><li>Read more:</li><li><a href="https://www.insider.com/everything-one-direction-has-said-about-each-other-since-breakup-2019-5">From throwing insults to talking about a reunion, here's everything One Direction members have said since their hiatus</a></li><li><a href="https://www.insider.com/most-popular-boy-band-song-every-year-2018-3">The top boy band song from the year you were born</a></li><li><a href="https://www.insider.com/niall-horan-carpool-karaoke-one-direction-lie-detector-video-2020-3">Niall Horan took a lie detector test during 'Carpool Karaoke' and he confidently said One Direction would get back together</a></li></ul>

Everything we know about One Direction's upcoming 10th anniversary reunion

<p><em><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><p class="source">REUTERS/Lucas Jackson</p><p class="caption">A trader throws a ball in the air as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as it closes for the week, July 5, 2013.</p></div></div></em></p>
<p><em>Forget Gordon Gekko. Old-style City <keyword id="6371444" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="traders">traders</keyword> are being replaced by maths geniuses who use super-computers to beat the markets. But are 'quants’ a force for good or evil?</em></p>
<p>At seven minutes past one on the afternoon of Tuesday April 23 this year a tweet from the AP news agency in Washington was published. It read “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” This was not true – <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10014982/Who-is-the-Syrian-Electronic-Army.html">the AP account had been hacked by a shady group of technology nerds calling themselves The Syrian Electronic Army</a> – but within milliseconds the tweet had been noticed and flagged by trading computers on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Programmed to scan the internet for words or phrases that might affect stock markets, the unthinking machines had immediately seized upon the tweet, noted the proximity of the words “Obama”, “explosions” and “White House” and unleashed a torrent of trades. Within seconds, the Dow Jones had plunged 140 points and more than $200 billion of capital had been wiped out.</p>
<p>A few minutes later the report was exposed as a hoax and the markets quickly returned to their pre-tweet levels. But, to many, the idea that one fake tweet could have such an enormous impact on the financial markets was incredible. Who was running Wall Street? Humans or machines?</p>
<p>If you thought “humans”, you were woefully out of date. Over the past decade or so there has been a technological coup d’etat on the trading floor. The old “Masters of the Universe” – the Gordon Gekko types with their slicked-back hair and $5,000 suits – have been superseded by unbelievably powerful computers capable of analysing vast amounts of data and buying or selling shares in the blink of an eye. Today, if you visit a trading floor, instead of pumped-up men in loose ties screaming down the phone, you are more likely to see rows of studious-looking people (most of them still men) sitting in front of computer screens, quietly monitoring trades being carried out on their behalf by machines.</p>
<p>Around 70% of the orders to buy or sell on Wall Street are now placed by software programs, and the studious-looking people, mathematical geniuses who are responsible for writing these programs, are the new “smartest guys in the room”. It is the age of the algorithm.</p>
<p>Mathematicians made their first forays into the financial world in the late Sixties. Edward Thorp, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, published a book in 1967 called <em>Beat the Market</em> in which he laid out what he claimed was a foolproof way of making money on the stock market, all based on a system he had previously devised to beat casinos at blackjack. The blackjack system had been so successful it had forced casinos to change their rules and <em>Beat the Market</em> – which had to do with selling stocks and bonds at one price and buying them back at a lower price – proved to be even more groundbreaking. In 1974, Thorp founded a hedge fund called Princeton/Newport Partners and proceeded to make a killing on the markets.</p>
<p>At the same time, the job prospects for scientists had nosedived. Since the 1969 moon landing, the American government had cut funding for science programmes and diverted it to the war in Vietnam.</p>
<p>“A generation of physicists who had gone to graduate school left with their PhDs and entered a severely depressed job market,” explains James Owen Weatherall, author of <em>The Physics of Finance</em>. They had to earn a living somehow, and, seeing how much money that there was to be made on Wall Street, many decided to move into finance.</p>
<p>In Britain, the fall of the Soviet Union led to an influx of Warsaw Pact scientists. In both cases, these scientists brought with them a new methodology based on analysing data and also a faith that, using sufficient computing firepower, it was possible to predict the market. It was the start of a new discipline, quantitative analysis, and the most famous “quant” of all was a shambling donnish maths genius with a scraggly beard and aversion to socks called Jim Simons.</p>
<p>For those who know their physics, Simons is a living legend. A piece of mathematics he co-created, the Chern-Simons 3-form, is one of the most important elements of string theory, the so-called “theory of everything”. Highly academic, Simons never seemed the sort of person who would gravitate to the earthy environs of Wall Street. But in 1982, he founded an extraordinarily successful hedge fund management company, Renaissance Technologies, whose signature fund, Medallion, went on to earn an incredible 2,478.6 per cent return in its first 10 years, way above every other hedge fund on the planet, including George Soros’s Quantum Fund.</p>
<p>Its success, based on a highly complex and secretive algorithm, continued in the Noughties and over the lifetime of the fund, Medallion’s returns have averaged 40 per cent a year, making Simons one of the richest men in the world with a net worth in excess of $10billion.</p>
<p>Of his 200 employees, ensconced in a fortress-like building in unfashionable Long Island, New York, a third have PhDs, not in finance, but in fields like physics, mathematics and statistics. Renaissance has been called “the best physics and mathematics department in the world” and, according to Weatherall, “avoids hiring anyone with even the slightest whiff of Wall Street bona fides. PhDs in finance need not apply; nor should traders who got their start at traditional investment banks or even other hedge funds. The secret to Simons’s success has been steering clear of the financial experts.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, old-style traders hate the quants. Not only have they pushed them off the top of the trading tree, there is also a basic clash of cultures. They are not flash and, invariably, rather awkward socially. As one anonymous software salesman who deals with hedge funds relates on a blog: “They don’t do small talk. When one of them picks me up from reception and we ride the elevator, I have learnt not to start chatting away about, say, the weather. They simply don’t seem to understand. They think you’re attempting to communicate something apparently important about meteorological conditions. Same thing with innocent jokes… blank stares.”</p>
<p>So what exactly do quantitative analysts do?</p>
<p>Patrick Boyle and Jesse McDougall run a hedge fund which they operate out of an Islington town house. Their offices are next to the sort of ethical café whose owners would probably be horrified at the rampant capitalism on display next door. When I meet them they are seated in a small room dominated by three computer screens. They start work at seven in the morning and end around 11 at night. “We have computer screens in our kitchen and living room,” says Boyle, 37. “So we can monitor the markets while having dinner and we can log in remotely if we are out in the evening.” He shows me a chart tracking his fund’s performance. The line doesn’t dip when the rest of the market dips and rises faster than the FTSE.</p>
<p>How do they do it?</p>
<p>“We do it with maths,” he says. “We buy stock market data and we analyse it. It’s like weather forecasting – we can say that there is a 65 per cent probability that the market will be up between open and close, so we are able to have better than 50 per cent odds on short-term movements and over time if you call short term well, you can make money.”</p>
<p>Who wrote the computer program they use? “I did,” says Boyle. How do you write something like that? “Slowly.”</p>
<p>The writing of the program may be slow but the speed of transactions is super fast. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/8700226/Lord-Myners-calls-for-inquiry-on-black-box-trading.html">Some quants specialise in what is called High Frequency Trading (HFT)</a>, which involves large numbers of trades over very short periods of time. “In one millisecond the price could go up by one penny,” says McDougall. “You do it thousands of times on hundreds of shares and you make money.”</p>
<p>Boyle and McDougall’s hedge fund doesn’t do high frequency trades, so to find out more I meet Simon Jones, who was running the quants desk at a major bank up until a few months ago. He is 36 years old.</p>
<p>“The guys and women who worked with me were the best of the best. They came from all over the world: from India, Russia and China.” The job was intense and highly competitive. “Let’s say I have noticed that the moment the Dow goes up the FTSE goes up,” says Jones. “The first person to notice that and make a trade can make money but to do that means getting the data from New York to London and then getting my trading decision across the Atlantic and me buying my FTSE before anyone else does.”</p>
<p>In this game speed is critical and that has led to what has been dubbed an arms race between firms. It has got to a point where firms have actually started moving their servers nearer to an exchange to speed up connection times.</p>
<p>In 2010, a company called Spread Networks laid a new direct cable between New York and Chicago, going straight through the Allegheny mountains, which shaved a little bit more than 1,000th of a second off the transmission time between stock exchanges.</p>
<p>For the opportunity to use a similarly fast tube between New York and London, Jones’s old bank was asked to pay $50 million. “It would have given us an advantage over others of about a six thousandths of one second,” says Jones.</p>
<p>This focus on the shortest of short-term gains has vastly increased volatility. “Warren Buffett owns shares in Coca-Cola and when they go down he says 'I’m holding on to them because I think they will go back up’,” says Jones. “But the HFT guy, all he cares about is the next millisecond. And when too many people start panicking about the next millisecond that’s when you have a crash.”</p>
<p>The perfect example of such a crash took place on May 6 2010. So many shares were traded that day that the online trading section of the New York Stock Exchange temporarily froze and between 2.30pm and 3pm the Dow Jones lost and then regained nearly $1 trillion. <em><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/8501055/Dollar-triggered-commodities-flash-crash-not-Bin-Laden.html">In what became known as the “Flash Crash”, shares in the management consultancy firm Accenture plummeted to a fraction above zero</a></em> . Apple shares went up to $100,000.</p>
<p>“None of us knew what to do or what would happen next,” says Dave Lauer, a quant who was working on a HFT desk that day. “It was terrifying.”</p>
<p>For Lauer, the Flash Crash was a wake-up call. “I started to see how the race to be fastest had left things in a very fragile state,” he tells me. The following year his wife revealed she was pregnant which prompted him to make a big decision. “I remember thinking, 'How will I explain to my future child what I do for a living?’” Lauer quit his job and last year told the Senate Banking committee that High Frequency Trading had brought the market to crisis point.</p>
<p>The Flash Crash was partly caused by the HFT strategy of “spoofing”; making bogus offers to buy or sell shares to flush out the intentions of rivals. On the day, an astonishing 19.4 billion shares were traded, more than were traded in the entirety of the Sixties, but hundreds of millions of them were never actually sold; they were merely held for a few thousandths of a second as traders tested the waters.</p>
<p>Isn’t there something wrong with a system that promotes so much volatility to the benefit of no one except a handful of hedge funds? Can it be a meaningful investment of time and technology? Warren Buffett’s business partner, Charlie Munger, has described High Frequency Trading as “basically evil”. “I think it is very stupid to allow a system to evolve where half of the trading is a bunch of short-term people trying to get information one millionth of a nanosecond ahead of somebody else,” he said earlier this year. “It’s legalised front-running.” HFT is certainly of no clear benefit to everyday investors - savers in pension funds and life policies.</p>
<p>The quants I meet don’t believe what they do is necessarily dangerous but they do voice some doubts.</p>
<p>“Some of the guys who come from pure science and maths backgrounds are used to solving a problem and it works,” Patrick Boyle says. “They think they can find a formula that will perfectly describe how the market moves. That is the philosopher’s stone – it is utterly impossible.” The danger is that in only seeing numbers and patterns the human dimension is forgotten.</p>
<p>After 16 years in the City, Simon Jones is now planning to go travelling. “A quant can earn up to seven figures,” he tells me, “but sometimes I do wonder whether I contributed positively to society.”</p>
<p>And what does he conclude? He pauses. “I was working with the best of the best,” he says. “My bank employed the brightest engineers, chemists and scientists – and we were all working together to get richer. The chemical and physics and health industries are worse off because of what we do because I tell you this: if there was a pay bonus structure similar to what we had in the City for curing cancer, we’d have found a cure for cancer.”</p>
<p>I find that sad and a little bit frightening. So, I ask, quants: good or bad? Jones looks at me and says, “Humans just found a new way of being greedy.”</p>
<p></p>

QUANTS: Meet The Math Geniuses Running Wall Street

<p><em><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><p class="source">REUTERS/Lucas Jackson</p><p class="caption">A trader throws a ball in the air as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as it closes for the week, July 5, 2013.</p></div></div></em></p>
<p><em>Forget Gordon Gekko. Old-style City <keyword id="6371444" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="traders">traders</keyword> are being replaced by maths geniuses who use super-computers to beat the markets. But are 'quants’ a force for good or evil?</em></p>
<p>At seven minutes past one on the afternoon of Tuesday April 23 this year a tweet from the AP news agency in Washington was published. It read “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” This was not true – <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10014982/Who-is-the-Syrian-Electronic-Army.html">the AP account had been hacked by a shady group of technology nerds calling themselves The Syrian Electronic Army</a> – but within milliseconds the tweet had been noticed and flagged by trading computers on <keyword id="42111" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Wall-Street">Wall Street</keyword>.</p>
<p>Programmed to scan the internet for words or phrases that might effect stock markets, the unthinking machines had immediately seized upon the tweet, noted the proximity of the words “Obama”, “explosions” and “White House” and unleashed a torrent of trades. Within seconds, the Dow Jones had plunged 140 points and more than $200 billion of capital had been wiped out.</p>
<p>A few minutes later the report was exposed as a hoax and the markets quickly returned to their pre-tweet levels. But, to many, the idea that one fake tweet could have such an enormous impact on the financial markets was incredible. Who was running Wall Street? Humans or machines?</p>
<p>If you thought “humans”, you were woefully out of date. Over the past decade or so there has been a technological coup d’etat on the trading floor. The old “Masters of the Universe” – the Gordon Gekko types with their slicked-back hair and $5,000 suits – have been superseded by unbelievably powerful computers capable of analysing vast amounts of data and buying or selling shares in the blink of an eye. Today, if you visit a trading floor, instead of pumped-up men in loose ties screaming down the phone, you are more likely to see rows of studious-looking people (most of them still men) sitting in front of computer screens, quietly monitoring trades being carried out on their behalf by machines.</p>
<p>Around 70% of the orders to buy or sell on Wall Street are now placed by software programs, and the studious-looking people, mathematical geniuses who are responsible for writing these programs, are the new “smartest guys in the room”. It is the age of the algorithm.</p>
<p>Mathematicians made their first forays into the financial world in the late Sixties. Edward Thorp, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, published a book in 1967 called <em>Beat the Market</em> in which he laid out what he claimed was a foolproof way of making money on the stock market, all based on a system he had previously devised to beat casinos at blackjack. The blackjack system had been so successful it had forced casinos to change their rules and <em>Beat the Market</em> – which had to do with selling stocks and bonds at one price and buying them back at a lower price – proved to be even more groundbreaking. In 1974, Thorp founded a hedge fund called Princeton/Newport Partners and proceeded to make a killing on the markets.</p>
<p>At the same time, the job prospects for scientists had nosedived. Since the 1969 moon landing, the American government had cut funding for science programmes and diverted it to the war in Vietnam.</p>
<p>“A generation of physicists who had gone to graduate school left with their PhDs and entered a severely depressed job market,” explains James Owen Weatherall, author of <em>The Physics of Finance</em>. They had to earn a living somehow, and, seeing how much money that there was to be made on Wall Street, many decided to move into finance.</p>
<p>In Britain, the fall of the Soviet Union led to an influx of Warsaw Pact scientists. In both cases, these scientists brought with them a new methodology based on analysing data and also a faith that, using sufficient computing firepower, it was possible to predict the market. It was the start of a new discipline, quantitative analysis, and the most famous “quant” of all was a shambling donnish maths genius with a scraggly beard and aversion to socks called Jim Simons.</p>
<p>For those who know their physics, Simons is a living legend. A piece of mathematics he co-created, the Chern-Simons 3-form, is one of the most important elements of string theory, the so-called “theory of everything”. Highly academic, Simons never seemed the sort of person who would gravitate to the earthy environs of Wall Street. But in 1982, he founded an extraordinarily successful hedge fund management company, Renaissance Technologies, whose signature fund, Medallion, went on to earn an incredible 2,478.6 per cent return in its first 10 years, way above every other hedge fund on the planet, including George Soros’s Quantum Fund.</p>
<p>Its success, based on a highly complex and secretive algorithm, continued in the Noughties and over the lifetime of the fund, Medallion’s returns have averaged 40 per cent a year, making Simons one of the richest men in the world with a net worth in excess of $10billion.</p>
<p>Of his 200 employees, ensconced in a fortress-like building in unfashionable Long Island, New York, a third have PhDs, not in finance, but in fields like physics, mathematics and statistics. Renaissance has been called “the best physics and mathematics department in the world” and, according to Weatherall, “avoids hiring anyone with even the slightest whiff of Wall Street bona fides. PhDs in finance need not apply; nor should traders who got their start at traditional investment banks or even other hedge funds. The secret to Simons’s success has been steering clear of the financial experts.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, old-style traders hate the quants. Not only have they pushed them off the top of the trading tree, there is also a basic clash of cultures. They are not flash and, invariably, rather awkward socially. As one anonymous software salesman who deals with hedge funds relates on a blog: “They don’t do small talk. When one of them picks me up from reception and we ride the elevator, I have learnt not to start chatting away about, say, the weather. They simply don’t seem to understand. They think you’re attempting to communicate something apparently important about meteorological conditions. Same thing with innocent jokes… blank stares.”</p>
<p>So what exactly do quantitative analysts do?</p>
<p>Patrick Boyle and Jesse McDougall run a hedge fund which they operate out of an Islington town house. Their offices are next to the sort of ethical café whose owners would probably be horrified at the rampant capitalism on display next door. When I meet them they are seated in a small room dominated by three computer screens. They start work at seven in the morning and end around 11 at night. “We have computer screens in our kitchen and living room,” says Boyle, 37. “So we can monitor the markets while having dinner and we can log in remotely if we are out in the evening.” He shows me a chart tracking his fund’s performance. The line doesn’t dip when the rest of the market dips and rises faster than the FTSE.</p>
<p>How do they do it?</p>
<p>“We do it with maths,” he says. “We buy stock market data and we analyse it. It’s like weather forecasting – we can say that there is a 65 per cent probability that the market will be up between open and close, so we are able to have better than 50 per cent odds on short-term movements and over time if you call short term well, you can make money.”</p>
<p>Who wrote the computer program they use? “I did,” says Boyle. How do you write something like that? “Slowly.”</p>
<p>The writing of the program may be slow but the speed of transactions is super fast. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/8700226/Lord-Myners-calls-for-inquiry-on-black-box-trading.html">Some quants specialise in what is called High Frequency Trading (HFT)</a>, which involves large numbers of trades over very short periods of time. “In one millisecond the price could go up by one penny,” says McDougall. “You do it thousands of times on hundreds of shares and you make money.”</p>
<p>Boyle and McDougall’s hedge fund doesn’t do high frequency trades, so to find out more I meet Simon Jones, who was running the quants desk at a major bank up until a few months ago. He is 36 years old.</p>
<p>“The guys and women who worked with me were the best of the best. They came from all over the world: from India, Russia and China.” The job was intense and highly competitive. “Let’s say I have noticed that the moment the Dow goes up the FTSE goes up,” says Jones. “The first person to notice that and make a trade can make money but to do that means getting the data from New York to London and then getting my trading decision across the Atlantic and me buying my FTSE before anyone else does.”</p>
<p>In this game speed is critical and that has led to what has been dubbed an arms race between firms. It has got to a point where firms have actually started moving their servers nearer to an exchange to speed up connection times.</p>
<p>In 2010, a company called Spread Networks laid a new direct cable between New York and Chicago, going straight through the Allegheny mountains, which shaved a little bit more than 1,000th of a second off the transmission time between stock exchanges.</p>
<p>For the opportunity to use a similarly fast tube between New York and London, Jones’s old bank was asked to pay $50 million. “It would have given us an advantage over others of about a six thousandths of one second,” says Jones.</p>
<p>This focus on the shortest of short-term gains has vastly increased volatility. “Warren Buffett owns shares in Coca-Cola and when they go down he says 'I’m holding on to them because I think they will go back up’,” says Jones. “But the HFT guy, all he cares about is the next millisecond. And when too many people start panicking about the next millisecond that’s when you have a crash.”</p>
<p>The perfect example of such a crash took place on May 6 2010. So many shares were traded that day that the online trading section of the New York Stock Exchange temporarily froze and between 2.30pm and 3pm the Dow Jones lost and then regained nearly $1 trillion. <em><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/8501055/Dollar-triggered-commodities-flash-crash-not-Bin-Laden.html">In what became known as the “Flash Crash”, shares in the management consultancy firm Accenture plummeted to a fraction above zero</a></em> . Apple shares went up to $100,000.</p>
<p>“None of us knew what to do or what would happen next,” says Dave Lauer, a quant who was working on a HFT desk that day. “It was terrifying.”</p>
<p>For Lauer, the Flash Crash was a wake-up call. “I started to see how the race to be fastest had left things in a very fragile state,” he tells me. The following year his wife revealed she was pregnant which prompted him to make a big decision. “I remember thinking, 'How will I explain to my future child what I do for a living?’” Lauer quit his job and last year told the Senate Banking committee that High Frequency Trading had brought the market to crisis point.</p>
<p>The Flash Crash was partly caused by the HFT strategy of “spoofing”; making bogus offers to buy or sell shares to flush out the intentions of rivals. On the day, an astonishing 19.4 billion shares were traded, more than were traded in the entirety of the Sixties, but hundreds of millions of them were never actually sold; they were merely held for a few thousandths of a second as traders tested the waters.</p>
<p>Isn’t there something wrong with a system that promotes so much volatility to the benefit of no one except a handful of hedge funds? Can it be a meaningful investment of time and technology? Warren Buffett’s business partner, Charlie Munger, has described High Frequency Trading as “basically evil”. “I think it is very stupid to allow a system to evolve where half of the trading is a bunch of short-term people trying to get information one millionth of a nanosecond ahead of somebody else,” he said earlier this year. “It’s legalised front-running.” HFT is certainly of no clear benefit to everyday investors - savers in pension funds and life policies.</p>
<p>The quants I meet don’t believe what they do is necessarily dangerous but they do voice some doubts.</p>
<p>“Some of the guys who come from pure science and maths backgrounds are used to solving a problem and it works,” Patrick Boyle says. “They think they can find a formula that will perfectly describe how the market moves. That is the philosopher’s stone – it is utterly impossible.” The danger is that in only seeing numbers and patterns the human dimension is forgotten.</p>
<p>After 16 years in the City, Simon Jones is now planning to go travelling. “A quant can earn up to seven figures,” he tells me, “but sometimes I do wonder whether I contributed positively to society.”</p>
<p>And what does he conclude? He pauses. “I was working with the best of the best,” he says. “My bank employed the brightest engineers, chemists and scientists – and we were all working together to get richer. The chemical and physics and health industries are worse off because of what we do because I tell you this: if there was a pay bonus structure similar to what we had in the City for curing cancer, we’d have found a cure for cancer.”</p>
<p>I find that sad and a little bit frightening. So, I ask, quants: good or bad? Jones looks at me and says, “Humans just found a new way of being greedy.”</p>
<p></p>

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