Balyasny's big London equity derivatives guy appears to have gone to Millennium

It's nearly Halloween and appropriately enough, Max Witcher is on the move. 

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Witcher is understood to have left hedge fund Balyasny Asset Management (BAM) in London and to be en route to Millennium where he will run a new pod. 

Witcher's official whereabouts are, however, cloaked in mystery. He didn't respond to a request to comment for this article. Nor did Balyasny. Millennium declined to comment. Only the FCA Register sheds some light on the situation: it says he was deregistered from Balyasny Asset Management's UK entity at the end of July. He has yet to officially work his magic elsewhere.

Witcher is a delta one trader. Although hedge funds are casting aside macro and credit portfolio managers, delta one traders who cover the ever-expanding universe of index rebalancing, ETF arbitrage, dividend trading and equity financing are still hot. 

Witcher is understood to be among the best. Before BAM he was at LMR. Before LMR he was at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. At Balyasny he was part of star PM Dan Avery's team. Avery is still at BAM and his pod is thought to be one of the top performing there this year. 

Curiously, the FCA Register shows Witcher registered at Millennium before - for a brief three month period during the pandemic of 2020. Then he vanished from the London scene and reappeared at LMR nine months later. It's not clear which realm he occupied during the interval. Gardening leave may explain the absence.

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