The world's most secretive electronic trading firm may treat you so well you will never leave
If you aspire to work in electronic trading, you are probably familiar with Jane Street, with Citadel Securities, with Hudson River, with XTX, with IMC. Maybe you have even heard of Five Rings. But have you heard of TGS Management Company LLC?
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If the answer is no, you are not alone. TGS Management Company does not have a big public profile. It does have a website, but the website doesn't say much beyond the fact that TGS is a pioneer in quantitative finance and was founded in 1989. Nor are its people typically listed on LinkedIn.
TGS didn't respond to a request to comment for this article. Speaking off the record, one source suggested TGS is the OG of quant trading. "They were the first. They were the golden unicorn," he said. "They are medium frequency zero." There is loose talk of immense profitability. In 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that TGS paid Alexey Poyarkov, an algorithm designer with no previous financial services experience $700k in his first year. Poykarkov currently lists himself on LinkedIn as a "researcher;" there's no mention of his employer.
TGS has been compared by some to Renaissance Technologies, the quant fund which closed to outside investors in 2005. Like RenTech, TGS is understood to have returned outside money; but this too have never been confirmed.
Much of what's known about TGS is derived from a dated Bloomberg article from 12 years ago, which we covered at the time. This said TGS was founded by three gifted mathematicians - Andrew Shechtel, C. Frederick Taylor and David Gelbaum. The three are now aged 66, 66, and 77 respectively. Gelbaum was retired, even in 2014.
TGS doesn't list jobs but there are suggestions that it's hiring. It has two offices, one in Irvine and one Princeton. Located in Orange County California, Irvine boasts that it's the safest city in America. Last year, TGS reportedly began building a new 200,000 square foot office in Irvine costing over $300m and doubling its existing footprint. New recruits seem likely. TGS has a "talent strategist", Dave Hahn, who joined from Two Sigma in 2020, as well as Michael Junge who after working for Google in 2013.
There are suggestions that TGS is hiring a new generation of talent. Historically, headhunters say people joined TGS but almost never left again. The implication is that working there was lucrative or interesting, or both.
Some people have left, though. Joseph Choi reportedly left around 2023 to form hedge fund JCAP. JCAP's 2024 ADV form says it employed six people but was terminated. Another trader, Harvard PhD Bo Liu, is thought to have left TGS for Millennium in 2021. Liu left Millennium again in 2024; he didn't respond to a request for this article either. Nor does he mention TGS on LinkedIn.
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