Goldman Sachs' new head of macro trading also came from a hedge fund

It may be too early to call a trend, but after Citi hired Tharsh Tharshan who was last seen at hedge fund Rokos in New York, Goldman Sachs has hired Daniel Dangoor who was last seen at hedge fund SPX Capital in London. Dangoor is Goldman's new London-based head of macro thematic trading.

It's not clear why Dangoor deserted his career as a senior portfolio manager at SPX. He's not commenting, and Goldman didn't respond to a request to comment either. That position could have been lucrative, though: SPX's most recently filed accounts reveal that it employed 43 people in the UK in 2023 and that they made a combined profit of £43m after tax. 

SPX wasn't Dangoor's first hedge fund role. He was at Brevan Howard and Bradesco Asset Management in Brazil before. Dangoor is Brazilian and it probably helps that SPX is based in Brazil and run by Brazilians. 

Why leave a hedge fund for Goldman Sachs? Only last year, Predee Anuvatnujotikul, a trader at Goldman in Singapore, quit to join SPX, which has around $11bn of AUM.

There are many reasons why hedge fund managers leave, including politics and weak performance. The suspicion, though, is always that portfolio managers who revert to banking have lost money at a hedge fund and are returning to banks for the security of a steady salary and opportunity to earn a bonus. As trader Brent Donnelly observed a few years ago, once you lose money at a hedge fund, you need to make it back again to earn a bonus. This can be challenging - “If you lose 1%, you need to make more than 1% to get back to flat.” At banks, by comparison, a loss one year doesn't necessarily mean you'll get no bonus the next.

It's not clear, however, that this is why Dangoor left SPX. Traders move back to banking for other reasons too: Tharshan joined Citi in London for family reasons. 

Headhunters say banks are often keen to hire traders who've tried hedge funds and then left them again: "If you've been booted out of a hedge fund for making a loss, a bank can pick you up without buying out stock. You're also far less likely to leave again for another fund."

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