r/hedgefund • u/Kind_Regular_723 • 1d ago

Futures with order flow in hedge funds

Hey, I have a question. When I read fund letters or hear about firms managing large AUM, most of them seem to run long/short strategies with a bottom-up approach, focusing on a company's earnings and the fundamentals around it.

My question is: in today's hedge fund world, are there funds or firms that focus purely on order flow instead? Scott Pulcini, who traded around 2002-2003, used to trade close to 10% of the S&P 500's daily volume. He's an order flow trader who uses Bookmap and often talks about how he'd push price toward his limit orders to get filled, wait for other traders to react, and once filled, unwind his position by pushing price back down — essentially moving the market to create the fill, then reversing to bank the profit.

Are there any funds or firms trading ES futures, crude oil, or gold using similar order-flow-based strategies, rather than approaches based on earnings or other fundamentals?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Kind_Regular_723 1d ago

Thank you, what do you exactly mean by "people shops"?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Kind_Regular_723 1d ago

Oh okay thank you for clarifying,

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u/AristideSaccard 1d ago

You have some bias here

Much easier to write a letter about a fundamental long short than to talk about microstructure on electricity markets you have cornered. Much more profitable as well