zlacker

And what benefit does the economy and society get by allowing monopolization of these strategies by a single company at the expense of basic right for workers to switch jobs to the ones that pay them the most?

It sounds so profoundly anti-capitalist - if the knowledge of certain strategy is so important, the employee should be retained by paying them more and giving them better perks instead of enforced labor contract.

>>izacus+(OP)
I am not defending for or against not sure why you replied to me.

But I think it is slightly silly reading your statements knowing that the individuals in that hyper specific industry are top earners already and educated to know what they are signing up for.

>>izacus+(OP)
This is exactly the right question. If quant firms make the world a better place by tightening spreads - a common justification - then wouldn't we get an even better place if everyone knew about these strategies?

>>izacus+(OP)
The benefit to society is the same as patents or copyright. Companies will be more likely to invest in developing new technology if they are confident their competitors won't be able to use the result.

>>lordna+I3
A counterargument here is the effects on internal transparency. If a quant firm knows its employees can leave and join a competitor tomorrow, they will be less forthcoming with IP. The lack of openness could lead to lower productivity within the firm, as work gets duplicated and teams can't share their insights with each other.

>>izacus+(OP)
> It sounds so profoundly anti-capitalist

Only if you have an extremely vague and poorly defined definition of "capitalist", which I don't blame you, most people are ignorant, and we live in a society that prefers to throw out opinions like they're reality.

>>durumu+fq
As long as we're throwing around generalized hypotheses, a company that shared internal IP freely, and also compensated people such that they didn't leave, would gain a lasting competitive advantage.

>>lordna+I3
If you can’t protect your IP, you don’t have a reason to develop it in the first place.

>>izacus+(OP)
I'd say it's the opposite, non-competes (or similar agreements) actually prevent monopolisation.

Otherwise, the biggest firms (e.g. Millenium, Citadel) could simply "buy out" any already-successful researcher, offering them more money (either in terms of % of profit, or - more importantly as it scales with size (for many strategies) - offering more capital to trade with.

>>izacus+(OP)
> if the knowledge of certain strategy is so important, the employee should be retained by paying them more and giving them better perks

This particular suggestion breaks down fast when you have multiple employees that need to collaborate. If you have a million dollar strategy, you can pay half a million to an employee as a retention bonus. But you can't pay half a million each to 8 employees.