JPMorgan's ex-top quant researcher didn't stick around at Virtu

Remember David Fellah? He's the former JPMorgan quantitative researcher who joined ITG as global head of quantitative analytics in April 2018. He's left again.

Fellah didn't leave ITG, which no longer exists as an independent entity after merging with Virtu in March 2019. - Instead, he left Virtu, which has been cutting costs after its acquisition. It's not clear whether Fellah left voluntarily or not, but he's currently understood to be on gardening leave in New York pending a new job in July 2019.

At JPMorgan, Fellah was head of the EMEA Linear quant research group, which helped developed active learning algorithms for trading - an area which JPMorgan is still focused heavily on as it applies artificial intelligence to its trading business. He spent nearly eight years at the U.S. bank.

Neither Fellah nor Virtu responded to requests to comment. As we reported earlier this week, JPMorgan itself has been poaching from ITG/Virtu - the bank just hired Philip Pearson, the former head of algorithmic trading for the U.S. and Latin America at ITG.

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