Todd Simkin
Associate Director, Susquehanna International Group. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveinvestoroperatorsig.com ↗
Todd Simkin is an Associate Director at Susquehanna International Group and the CEO of Susquehanna Re. He oversees strategic initiatives, private equity investments, and the firm's trader education program.
2shows
2appearances
49statements
4resolved
4supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Todd Simkin said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Simkin: Unlimited upside asymmetry won't stop venture capitalists from going broke
“But that does not mean because of the asymmetries that venture capital is a winning business because you've got this unlimited upside, or that insurance is a losing business because you've got this unlimited downside. Ultimately, what it comes down to is appro…”
Simkin: Black-Scholes wrongly assumes stock distributions are right-skewed, not left-skewed
“The Black-Scholes model, which is literally Nobel Prize winning math, this is amazing stuff, has assumptions built into it that we know are just wrong. Among the assumptions that are built in is a normal distribution of stock returns, which would lead to a log…”
Simkin: Traders are made, not born, and can be taught
“That they had the firm belief that traders are Made, not born. So it's not the case that you have to find somebody who is inherently a trader, and then you just put them in the right spot, and they go. Instead, they said, if you bring us any smart person, if y…”
Simkin: Susquehanna refuses to lock in profits while expected value is positive
“At Susquehanna, we'd say, no, if anything, if we're able to buy more at 19, and we still think it's worth 20, then we would. The fact that we got to buy it for 10 is great, sort of confirmed now by the fact that someone's willing to pay 19, but that doesn't me…”
Simkin: SIG backed ByteDance for diversification, not foreseeing TikTok's global dominance
“I alluded to being fortunate enough to invest in ByteDance when it was a several million dollar company before it became a several billion dollar company. It'd be great in hindsight to say we are so good at figuring out what social media platform is going to b…”
Simkin: A five-year fund structure would have forced SIG out of ByteDance
“If we had entered our ByteDance position, and it was in a fund where the investors needed to get paid back in five years, we would have closed out of that position and made a little bit. It would have been happy day in the office, and we would have been out of…”
Simkin: Call-out culture incentivizes finger-pointing regardless of expertise
“The big problem with call out culture is that we're rewarding people just for the call out. That it doesn't matter what their other behavior it is. It doesn't matter what other positions they have, what knowledge they have, what expertise they have. They just …”
Simkin: Probabilistic forecasts cannot be judged wrong unless 0% or 100%
“It's really hard to say anybody's wrong about a single probability prediction, unless they said that something was zero percent or a hundred percent.”
Simkin: Constructive communication beats probabilistic thinking for truth-finding
“Talk more is number one. That beats probabilistic thinking that, you know, that, that beats sort of anything else in truth finding is, is being able to bring in other people in the decision process in a constructive way.”
Simkin: Trading decisions function like intuitive grammar, not a mechanical checklist
“If I had a script for it, it'd be easy, because then I would just give people a script to use as a checklist like a pilot does when they're starting up their plane, or like a surgeon does when they're starting a surgery. I don't have a script, and I wish I did…”
Simkin: Traders must articulate underlying conditions driving their decisions
“You've incorporated that into your decision process, but if you don't say it out loud, your decision process sounds odd to me. But then you say, here's the pattern that I've noticed, and here's what I'm pricing in, and you say, okay, well then that makes sense…”
Simkin: Counterparty willingness to trade illiquid assets signals severe adverse selection
“There were very esoteric products that traded in Europe that did not have a lot of liquidity, which meant that if I was trading, I was probably trading against other professionals who were doing a good job of figuring out the appropriate fair value and the exp…”
Simkin: Quants must update assumptions based on pricing sensitivity when trading
“And the other thing is, in a Bayesian way, to update my assumptions when somebody is willing to trade against me by looking at those points that are most sensitive. So understanding not only the outputs of the model, Here's the price at which we think you shou…”
Simkin: Susquehanna expands into insurance and partners with Kalshi prediction markets
“Most recently, in the last few years, we've moved into insurance, which is where I spend all of my time now, is thinking about insurance products. And similarly, we've also recently did a partnership with Kalshi, where we are providing liquidity in event marke…”
Simkin: Client reporting and rigid mandates structurally constrain external hedge funds
“One of the problems with hedge funds is that they have to frequently manage to Not just quarterly reports, but monthly reports, or even weekly and daily reports. So they've got to show that they're staying with the strategy that they have outlined for their in…”
Simkin: Proprietary capital gives large-scale trading firms agility without LP constraints
“We get all of the benefits of having a large capital base with all of the benefits of having a small number of decision makers at the top who are weighing in. They're not putting artificial rules in place that we might have seen if we had ever taken outside mo…”
Simkin: Susquehanna holds positions to maturity unless underlying information changes
“Part of the culture of the firm is one in which we are Finding edges wherever we can find them, but then capturing all of it by either holding to maturity or holding to expiration or closing at an appropriate rate when we have either new information or where t…”
Simkin: Early-stage venture checks function as real options to hold and learn
“Sometimes what we are doing is R&D type investing. We are putting money in so that we have an embedded option to keep our money in. That what we are buying is, in the parlance of economics professors, a real option, and the real option is that we don't have to…”
Simkin: Binary prediction pricing communicates risk clearer than traditional asset prices
“So having a price that you can immediately turn into a probability really leads to improved communication about the underlying risk in a way that you don't have even in the financial markets. What does it mean for a stock to be trading for a 117 dollars? You h…”
Simkin: Sports odds pricing requires combining inside handicapping and outside statistics
“This is again that marriage of art and science. So some of it is being a good handicapper, being able to look at Jared Goff and decide how strong is he as a quarterback with this certain receiver core. That's part of it. And that is what we would refer to as t…”
Simkin: Insured contingent promotions embed customer call options, outperforming standard discounts
“From your perspective, it costs you the exact same amount of money, except that now you're not hoping to go from a 100,000 to a 120,000 dollars a month. You're hoping to go from a 100,000 to 500,000 dollars a month because anybody, whoever was in the market fo…”
Simkin: Traders should not back limited opinions against informed counterparties
“Our approach is to recognize that we are often on the bad end of informational asymmetry that other people who are looking to trade in the markets frequently know more than we do. And as a result, we don't want to back our own limited opinion against a more in…”
Simkin: Decision-makers must update opinions in a Bayesian way
“The most important thing from our perspective is to be willing to update that opinion in a Bayesian way, to use approaches that are going to be inclusive of all the information available to us, and only when we get to mutually exclusive information or mutually…”
Simkin: Use related instruments to find disconfirming evidence before taking trades
“And again, in isolation, it's really hard for me just to say this person's wrong. But if I have a similar looking option, similar because it's the same expiration, or because it's the same strike and a different expiration, or that there's something about the …”
The other half of the tape: Todd Simkin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ted Seides 1
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tap a year for its mentions
Capital Allocators 1
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Todd's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Associate Director, Susquehanna International Group | 1 | 27 | 100% 2/2 | full record on Capital Allocators → |
 KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Associate Director, Susquehanna International Group | 1 | 22 | 100% 2/2 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |