NYC traders head south to lead a new trading desk in Florida

After the excitement of working on Wall Street begins to fade and financial services professionals’ current role grows stale, many set their sights on new opportunities in sunnier climes with lower taxes and a more affordable cost of living, and traders are no exception. Instead of taking an Uber or riding the subway to work, they can drive a boat to the office.

Merus Global Investments, a New York-based multi‐strategy investment partnership akin to a multi-family office (MFO), has expanded to Florida, hiring veteran traders Seth Setrakian and Roger Egbert to head up its new Boca Raton office.

Setrakian and Egbert, both senior managing directors and partners at Merus, together are leading a new eight‐person Florida‐based team focused on U.S. equities, futures and currency (including cryptocurrencies) trading.

Joseph Monte, the CEO and senior managing partner of Merus, says the firm has grown steadily since launching in late 2015, expanding headcount by about 20% each year, and now has approximately 45 employees.

Currently, the group in Boca Raton is all traders, but as the firm expands, Merus may add some back-office and support staff as well. That said, Monte expects that the vast majority of the corporate and support functions to be handled out of the firm’s New York headquarters.

“Our plan is to expand that team [in Boca Raton],” Monte says. “We have space to accommodate a doubling of the group, which we hope to do over the next two-to-three years.”

Before joining Merus, Egbert was the managing partner of macro investment firm Spectrum Capital. Previously he was a partner at First New York Capital Management and the head of the trading desk at MSD Capital. Prior to that, he was a healthcare trader at Pequot Capital.

Most recently Setrakian was the president of Spectrum, so he knows Egbert well. Previously Setrakian was co‐head of global equities at First New York Capital Management and a partner at Seneca Capital. He got his start in the corporate finance group at Arthur Andersen.

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