Hedge fund Point72 lost one of its top quants
The time are a-changing at Cubist Systematic Strategies, the quant arm of hedge fund Point72. In September, Steve Cohen announced to staff that he was ousting its current president Denis Dancanet and appointing Worldquant's CIO Geoffrey Lauprete. He's not the only senior departure before the end of the year.
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Jae Ho Kim, a Princeton PhD and head of portfolio research at Cubist, has gone on gardening leave. He spent two and a half years as part of the management team at Cubist, and eight years before that at its parent fund, working as a senior risk manager on its executive risk committee. The role involved analysing the performance of Point72's portfolio managers (PMs) to optimize the distribution of capital.
Risk staff at hedge funds are usually segregated from the traders themselves, but Kim spent five months as interim head of Point72's macro business, managing 12-14 PM teams. His permanent successor was ex-Lehman Brothers and Millennium trader, Mohammed Grimeh.
Business Insider reported last month that Cubist has had positive returns in 2025 despite a severe drawdown in the summer. Business Insider said Cubist separates itself from Point72 by operating with a hybrid model; alongside its ~60 PM teams, it has a centralized team of roughly 100 people, replicating the style of quant funds like Renaissance Technologies. Business Insider said Dancanet had a laissez-faire approach to running Cubist. That may change now he's gone.
Point72 declined to comment.
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