A Morgan Stanley MD quit to start a Zen quant fund, and people are following her

Former Morgan Stanley managing director Juhua Zhu has left the firm to found New York quant fund Argus Investment Management. Zhu has brought with her at least two former Morgan Stanley quants from its electronic market making business.

Joining Zhu is former Morgan Stanley vice president Andy Sun and former executive director Zhiyang Cao, each of whom were with the bank for roughly a decade. They are joined by Da Wang, a quantitative researcher who last worked at New York hedge fund Two Sigma.

Argus Investment Management is a data-driven quant fund that utilizes machine learning as part of its investment strategy, according to the company website. While the fund appears lightly staffed at the moment, Argus Investment has several open job postings on its site, including a trading operations specialist, a data engineer and a quant developer and researcher. They’re even in the market for an intern.

Argus appears to embrace an almost Zen-like work-life balance not typically associated with working at an investment bank. From the description of the firm’s culture: “In our world, work and life are not opposing; instead, they complement each other and can feed into each other in a synergetic way. Hard work definitely matters, but not at the cost of one’s well-being. Excellence, not ego, is our ultimate quest."

Zhu spent her entire career at Morgan Stanley before leaving in July. She was named managing director in 2015. Zhu earned her PhD in machine learning from Princeton University.

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