From Financial News, London, July 24:
Former Citadel engineer Alex Alifimoff has joined the rival hedge fund as head of AI weather amid growing demand for alternative data
Steve Cohen’s multi-strategy hedge fund Point72 has hired an AI expert to help forecast weather patterns for its money managers.
Alex Alifimoff, who previously worked at Citadel as an engineer, has joined Point72 as head of AI weather in the firm’s global macro team, according to people familiar with the matter.
In his new role, Alifimoff will build AI-based models to forecast weather patterns to help trading teams, including macro and commodity portfolio managers, the people added. He will be based in the firm’s Stamford office.
For years, hedge funds have looked for alternative data sources in a bid to steal a march on their competition, turning to everything from satellite imagery to social media posts in a bid to better predict economic patterns. However, as this data has become more available in recent years, AI experts are now at a premium to stay ahead of the curve.
Hedge funds are offering lucrative pay packages of up to $1m to attract top weather modelling experts, Bloomberg reported last year. Traders, mainly across commodities desks, require weather expertise to predict price fluctuations....
....MUCH MORE
The funds are playing catch-up to Cargill.
And Cargill has the data advantage of over 100 years of proprietary observations, a treasure trove of AI training material.
So while the speculative mice can skim some grain/cocoa/almond etc. profit from the commercials, the commercials will, and must, win overall. If they don't the entire game stops.
