What happens to top young traders in investment banks now? 33% join hedge funds

2016 feels like a lifetime ago and then some. We wrote about young traders climbing the ranks of banking in February of that year. The list included trading prodigies that made managing director in their 20; many have since gone on to even bigger and better things.

Follow eFinancialCareers on Google News here. 

We’ve looked at what 15 of them have been up to since then and found wildly diverging paths. A third have gone to hedge funds, while. Only 4 stayed in banking, but half of those are at a new employer. Two are now at tech firms. Below is what each of them do now, and what they were up to as star traders in 2016.

Rani Nazim: Credit Portfolio Manager at Verition

In 2016: Credit Trading MD at Morgan Stanley

Rani Nazim made MD aged 33 in what was a very bad year to be a Morgan Stanley credit trader. While 25% of the division was cut, she was promoted.

She stayed with the bank for eight years, helping to build out the leveraged finance, algorithmic trading and portfolio trading businesses in Morgan Stanley’s European credit trading team. She left in late 2023 to focus on being an angel investor with a sustainability/AI focus, but entered the hedge fund space with Verition just three months ago.

Andrew Silverman: Head of Credit, Discretionary Macro & Fixed Income at Schonfeld

In 2016: Distressed Debt Trading MD at Goldman Sachs

Silverman, a Harvard educated math genius, made MD at Goldman Sachs aged 28 in 2014. 

Silverman bounced between a few firms before landing at Schonfeld. He first left for asset management firm GoldenTree where he was head of leveraged credit trading, then joined another investment firm, Anchorage Capital, as an MD. He was hired by Schonfeld in 2022 to set up its credit unit; he joined as the fund grew its headcount from 600 to 900 in just over a year.

Dan Avery: Delta One Portfolio Manager at Balyasny Asset Management

In 2016: Index Trading MD at Goldman Sachs

Avery was aged just 28 in 2016, when he became an MD at Goldman Sachs. He was the youngest in his class, but has really made his name over on the buy-side.

Avery left Goldman Sachs in 2020 to join hedge fund Millennium. In early 2024, he was made a partner at the fund, but that didn’t stop him from leaving for Balyasny later that year. He was thought to run around $1bn at Millennium and reportedly ran a similar amount at the time he joined BAM.

Simon Drake: Convertibles Associate Investment Officer at Rokos Capital Management

In 2016: Convertibles Trading VP at JPMorgan

Simon Drake was a Forbes 30 under 30 nominee in 2015. His profile described him as a “top corporate bond market maker, trading hundreds of millions of dollars in daily volume in investment grade corporate debt.” He was also the first trader on the list to have never made MD at their respective bank.

Drake left JPMorgan in 2019, taking up portfolio manager roles across a few hedge funds including BlueFin Capital Management. Since 2024, he has worked at Rokos Capital Management, the hedge fund ran by ex-Goldman Sachs trader Chris Rokos.

Darren Dixon: Founder of Kingston Infrastructure Partners

In 2016: Structured Credit Trading MD at Goldman Sachs

Darren Dixon lived up to the hype at Goldman Sachs after he made MD in 2016. After six more years at the bank, he became Goldman’s youngest black partner, but he left the bank just two years later.

Today, he runs Kingston Infrastructure Partners, a Miami-based investment firm. Late last year, it was raising funds for its debut infrastructure fund, targeting $2bn.

Nila Das: Chief Operating Officer at Proof Trading

In 2016: Mortgage Trading VP at Citi

Nila Das, like Drake, was a well regarded trader that achieved a 30 under 30 nomination as a VP, but did not convert that momentum into an MD promotion. 

Das was promoted to director in 2019 and spent another three years at the bank but ulimately left for Proof Trading, an equities execution platform spun out of the IEX exchange.

Rany Moubarak: Head of Global Markets for Middle East and Africa at Nomura

In 2016: APAC Head of Fixed Income Structuring at Morgan Stanley

Moubarak is something of a journeyman; he started his career with Morgan Stanley in London before moving to Dubai then later Hong Kong, where he made MD. He joined Nomura in 2021, still in Hong Kong, as its co-head of global markets structuring for Asia, then moved back to Dubai for his current role.

Kunal Shah: Co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International

In 2016: Partner at Goldman Sachs

Probably the most recognizable name on the list, Kunal Shah was already living the dream as a 32-year-old Goldman Sachs partner. He was one of the youngest ever traders to make MD at Goldman, aged just 27.

Alongside running Goldman Sachs International, the bank’s European arm, Shah also co-heads the bank’s global fixed income, currencies and commodities division.

Sam Berberian: Head of Credit Trading at Citadel Securities

In 2016: High Yield Credit Trading MD at Goldman Sachs

Berberian just missed the cutoff for being a Goldman MD in his 20s, but he presumably won’t be complaining. Since then, he has worked his way up to a senior role at one of the largest electronic market makers in the world.

Berberian first left Goldman for Citi in 2018 to be its head of high-yield credit trading, then left for Citadel Securities five years later. The market maker was on track to pay $2m per head last year, but high performers presumably earned much more.

Philipp De Cassan: Portfolio Manager at Verition Fund Management

In 2016: Rates Trading MD at Nomura

De Cassan headed Nomura’s linear rates trading team in 2016, aged 31. He left two years later for London hedge fund LMR partners and has moved between hedge funds since then. De Cassan spent two and a half years at LMR before a four-year stint at Point72. He joined Verition last year.

Jonathan Birnbaum: Founder of OpenYield

In 2016: Credit Trading VP at Morgan Stanley

Birnbaum is another 30 under 30 nominee who managed a team of 100+ people aged 29. Rather than try for MD, he has been in and out of the fintech sector.

After a few ill-fated attempts at founding a fintech, Birnbaum joined hedge fund Bridgewater to work in execution. Just under two years later, he left for a more mature fintech, digibank SoFi, then joined financial planning fintech Domain Money as its COO. 

In 2022, Birnbaum tried his hand at founding a fintech again, launching credit pricing platform OpenYield. It raised $7m in seed funding in late 2024.

Lear Janiv: Partner at Goldman Sachs

In 2016: Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Another young Goldman MD to live up to the hype, Janiv made partner at the bank in 2022, leading the bank’s exotic derivatives team. In 2023, Bloomberg reported that he was moved from London to Paris and named head of FICC and equities trading for its main EU unit. 

Adam Richmond: Unknown

In 2016: US Credit Strategy MD at Morgan Stanley

Some trading stars eventually opt for the quiet life, it seems. Richmond was promoted to MD in 2016 and worked at the bank until 2019 according to FINRA’s BrokerCheck tool. It’s not clear what he has been up to since then; his only activity on social media is a series of reposts, most recently for the Israel ParaSport Centre.

Roland Jeurissen: Co-head of FX Options at Morgan Stanley

In 2016: FX Options Trader at Citi

Jeurissen ran one of the largest currency trading books at Citi in 2016, aged 32. He left for Morgan Stanley a year later and, three years after that, he was promoted to co-head of FX options alongside ex-Citadel trader Alex Silverman. 

Jon Deane: CEO of Trovio

In 2016: Commodities Trading MD at JPMorgan

In 2016, Jon Deane was head of JPMorgan’s APAC commodities trading business, based in Singapore. He has since moved back to Sydney, where he went to University, and runs asset manager Trovio, which focused on trading crypto at launch. There hasn’t been much news out of the firm, apart from one of its chief investment officer, Vimal Gor, in 2024.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: WhatsApp: (+44 20 7997 7910), Telegram: @AlexMcMurray, Signal: @AlexMcMurrayEFC.88 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email [email protected].

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.

Image source: Envato