Additions to the Starkiller team are not something we would normally publicize (why should any of you care) but today we've got a special case. I want to publicly welcome Corey Hoffstein to the team as a research partner and advisor.
Corey has been working with the team for some time now, but given the public nature of some of the research we are going to publish together here, I thought it made sense to introduce him.
Corey is the Co-Founder and CIO of Newfound Research, a quantitative investment firm in the equity space that has a specific bent towards momentum strategies. Newfound has a suite of open-end mutual funds, ETFs and separately managed accounts. Corey is also a published researcher in the Journal of Index Investing amongst other papers, my personal favorite being his research into Liquidity Cascades.
For those of you who haven't read his research, listened to his various podcasts, or following him on Twitter, the best way I can explain Corey is a younger, more adventurous version of Cliff Asness. While I would place Cliff in the pantheon of my professional/intellectual heroes, he's too rich and too old now to be roped into working with us here (I tried), Corey was literally my second call.
Crypto is a volatile, quickly developing, and emotionally demanding space. There are a lot of great quantitative researchers out there, but I challenge you to find another quant on this earth that has personally gone as deep down so many crypto rabbit holes as Corey. Crypto forces you to have to be open to so many new ideas (and shenanigans), but it will absolutely demolish you if you don't approach them from an intellectually rigorous and honest perspective. Corey has exhibited the ability to do that, which I think is unique. I encourage you to take a few minutes to watch this clip from his Pirates of Finance podcast on Youtube from last year where he goes through a specific example of yield farming algo stables and the calamity that can (and will) ensue when dealing with these experiments. Corey also puts out another, I guess more serious podcast, Flirting With Models, where he brings on the best of the best throughout the quantitative investment space. This episode with Cliff, aptly titled, "...But Not So Open Your Mind Falls Out" is one of my favorites.
In the spirit of building Starkiller to be some mix of Tiger Global and AQR within the crypto space, Corey will be working with the team to publish research on a range of ideas publicly. Moreso, he's been a valuable set of eyes and ears throughout the ecosystem and advisor to the team as we've navigated around another crypto bloodbath this year.
It's my view that we're just now entering the era where the "adults" are getting involved in this space. And by adults I don't mean the "suits" from banks, I mean real investment professionals bringing rigorous quantitative and fundamental analysis skills to an incredibly inefficient space. As we've seen over the past six months or so, once again, even the largest firms are mostly still gambling with levered beta in one way bets. We're excited to have one of the preeminent adults on the team here at Starkiller to further develop our strategies and keep us honest whenever the next big cycle takes place.