Inside the Secret World of Prop Traders | Noel Smith of Convex Asset Management

Noel Smith, founder of Convex Asset Management has spent most of his career outside of the world of managing other people’s money. Instead, he traded his own capital as a proprietary trader. Prop traders are famed for generating staggering rates of return, but because they have no interest in raising money, their secrets and strategies generally remain behind closed doors. However, he has decided to bring these strategies to the hedge fund world at Convex Asset Management and while they don’t scale to produce the same level of returns their lack of availability outside the prop world gives him differentiation in the product marketplace. In this interview, Smith explains why props can make so much more money, how much harder capital raising is than he anticipated, and why he ranks relationships and likability higher than performance when it comes to hedge fund success. Follow Other People’s Money on: Apple Podcast https://bit.ly/4e7QJ1M Spotify https://bit.ly/3Yhaazi YouTube https://bit.ly/3C63VXR Follow Noel Smith on Twitter: https://x.com/NoelConvex Follow Max Wiethe on Twitter: https://x.com/maxwiethe Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:16 What is Prop Trading? 10:51 Moving to the Hedge Fund World 16:36 The Hedge Fund Popularity Contest 23:04 Volatility Trading Strategies 27:27 Extracting Information From The Options Market 32:09 Scaling Prop Strategies 34:44 Alpha Degradation 39:31 Being Good Is Not Enough 48:03 Dealing With Extreme Performance 53:28 Long-term Vision For Convex Asset Management