Dialogue with Guo Shengbei: How Top Wall Street Traders Are Cultivated After 33 Years in the Market?

In April 2025, former President Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” caused a global uproar. Why did the U.S. government pass such an absurd bill? What impact will it have on us? How will countries like Europe, Canada, and Japan respond? Is it still worth investing in U.S. assets?

From across the ocean, we often feel a sense of “alienation” when trying to understand U.S. policies—due to differing political and cultural backgrounds, it is difficult for us to truly grasp the real intentions of American society towards us, just as Western countries struggle to understand us!

To bridge this “information gap,” we have specially invited Guo Shengbei, the founder and president of GSB Award Fund and former managing director of Deutsche Bank in New York, to create the “New York Talk” column, helping everyone better understand the essence of the financial world—click the blue text to learn more about “New York Talk Season 1.”

Below is the 2024 Wall Street Insights exclusive interview report with Mr. Guo Shengbei, hoping to help everyone better understand him.

Academic “Tech Guy” or “Alternative” Programmer?

When I first encountered Guo Shengbei, he gave a strange impression—his way of chatting was completely unlike that of a suave financial professional. After a few pleasantries, he began to passionately share the somewhat convoluted “Kalecki-Levy” formula with me. The lengthy theoretical knowledge left me with some understanding, but I couldn’t digest it quickly. His first impression was more like that of a university professor in a technical field—of course, he is indeed a bona fide “tech guy.”

Guo Shengbei graduated from the Computer Science Department of Peking University, one of the earliest students in China to engage with computer science. After completing his undergraduate studies, he went abroad to Columbia University in the United States to obtain a master’s degree in computer science. His years of studying computer science made Guo Shengbei accustomed to interpreting the world through theories and models, which is why he exudes an “academic” aura.

However, Guo Shengbei is also a “maverick” programmer. During his studies at Columbia, he developed a love for RAP, which has accompanied him throughout his trading career. In casual conversation, he mentioned that “RAP helps him effectively relax and alleviate the mental stress after intense trading.” Besides RAP, another major hobby of Guo Shengbei is Chinese martial arts—he stated that the essence of martial arts is very similar to trading, both emphasizing discipline and honing mental willpower. His long-term practice of martial arts is one of the important secrets that allow him to maintain a 32-year-long trading career.

28-Year-Old Wall Street Vice President, Four Years Ago a Financial Novice?

Talking about Guo Shengbei’s financial career, it is quite a story. After graduating from Peking University, Guo Shengbei was admitted to the PhD program in computer science at Columbia University, but after completing his master’s degree, he received an invitation from Morgan Stanley (hereafter referred to as “Morgan Stanley”)—hoping he could join their securities derivatives department and be dispatched to work in Tokyo At that time in Tokyo, Japan was in the early stages of the real estate bubble burst. Although the market had already shown signs of trouble, Tokyo remained one of the most prosperous cities, accompanied by a longing for its vibrancy. Guo Shengbei ultimately chose to give up his PhD in Computer Science at Columbia University and joined Morgan Stanley in 1992, heading to Tokyo.

In Tokyo at that time, although the asset bubble had begun to burst, there were still significant divergences in the market—when would the recession of the Japanese economy end? After more than two years of adjustment, would the market begin to recover?

As market expectations continued to fluctuate, the Japanese stock market became a "battlefield" for international capital—the market was flooded with a large number of "ineffective trades" dominated by options and spot trading. In the bloody struggle between bulls and bears, although the overall capital flow in the market was enormous, it could not form trend-based trading opportunities, which led to the Japanese stock market becoming a "playground" for international capital to repeatedly harvest profits.

At that time, Morgan Stanley, where Guo Shengbei worked, was one of the Wall Street capital forces that went to Japan to "feast."

From 1992 to 1994, according to Guo Shengbei's recollection, the Tokyo branch of Morgan Stanley was one of the most profitable departments at that time. Relying on the leading computer science technology in the world, the Tokyo branch skillfully utilized networks, program trading, and arbitrage trading to gain substantial profits in the Japanese market, and Guo Shengbei also stood out at Morgan Stanley due to his outstanding computer skills.

With the company's business adjustments, in 1994, Guo Shengbei began to return to Morgan Stanley's headquarters in New York to participate in the construction of its internal trading system, designing and implementing several large systems including risk management, fund management, fund accounting, real-time trading, real-time data transmission, and back-office trading management, as well as designing multiple arbitrage models for stocks, futures, and options. Due to his significant contributions to trading system design, he was promoted to the position of "Vice President," and at that time, only four years had passed since Guo Shengbei joined Morgan Stanley, and the ambitious Guo Shengbei was only 28 years old.

Deutsche Bank "Forging Swords" for Twelve Years, "Picking Up Chips from the Fire" in the Financial Storm

Life is not a martial arts novel; it is not about picking up a "martial arts manual" and suddenly becoming "invincible." For an outstanding trader, time and experience are the most valuable assets.

In 1997, the Asian financial crisis broke out, causing enormous losses across Southeast Asian countries, while some financial giants reaped excess profits amid the massive market fluctuations. In the same year, Guo Shengbei and his entire team left Morgan Stanley to join Deutsche Bank (hereafter referred to as Deutsche Bank), beginning his 12-year proprietary trading career at Deutsche Bank.

It is well known that proprietary trading is the most difficult and complex business among various institutional operations, characterized by high returns and high risks, and it requires a high level of responsibility for trading results.

At this time, Guo Shengbei had just been recommended by Morgan Stanley to study finance at the prestigious Wharton School, beginning to apply financial theories to actual investment trading From 1997 to 2009, the severe fluctuations in the financial market provided Guo Shengbei with ample experience. He witnessed the transition of the international financial market from disorder to order. Through continuous adaptation to the market, Guo Shengbei's understanding of the market rapidly increased, and he gradually began to perceive the essence of the financial market, forming his unique trading style.

It is worth mentioning that, according to his recollection, during his twelve years at Deutsche Bank, the trading profits of Guo Shengbei's department were positive every year, and there were never any directional mistakes during extreme market conditions. He achieved exceptionally high returns in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2008, becoming a "countercurrent" in the market at that time.

In fact, from a retrospective perspective, Guo Shengbei's financial career is undoubtedly quite "fortunate":

As one of the earliest students to engage with computer science, he was "far ahead" even on Wall Street at that time. This strong first-mover advantage provided Guo Shengbei with numerous opportunities and a significant platform. Before joining Deutsche Bank, Guo Shengbei systematically studied finance at the Wharton School. During his twelve years at Deutsche Bank, he experienced some of the largest financial events and crises of the century—witnessing and personally experiencing the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 1998 Russian debt default and Long-Term Capital Management crisis, the bursting of the internet bubble in 2000, the quantitative fund crisis in 2007, and the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008.

Excellent computer skills + top-tier institutional investment thinking + systematic financial knowledge training + rich crisis response experience have shaped the "investment veteran" Guo Shengbei, who now has 32 years of market experience.

After Many Ups and Downs, Set Sail Again

In 2010, Guo Shengbei left Deutsche Bank's fund business and began to establish his own hedge fund—GSB Award Fund. This fund specializes in quantitative trading, with its three main investment areas being: statistical arbitrage, technical trading, and macro quantification.

However, leaving a large institution to start his own business was not that simple. After becoming an entrepreneur, Guo Shengbei could no longer focus solely on being a "specialist" as he did at top institutions like Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. After establishing the hedge fund, Guo Shengbei began to be "forced" to transform into a "generalist."

In addition to building trading models and implementing risk control measures, Guo Shengbei needed to make his voice heard more in the public market to raise sufficient funds for the company and also had to devote some attention to the daily management of the company.

From 2010 to 2015, Guo Shengbei quickly completed the transition from a professional trader to the president of a fund company. At the same time, he received an olive branch from a top domestic institution—CITIC Securities.

In 2014, while in the United States, Guo Shengbei keenly discovered investment opportunities in the Chinese market through his theoretical analysis framework and vigorously called for investment in the Chinese market. This led to him being frequently invited back to China for roadshows and presentations. Through close communication with the market, Guo Shengbei's legendary background and profound professional capabilities were highly recognized by CITIC Securities, which invited him to serve as Managing Director and head of the alternative investment business line—responsible for CITIC Securities' proprietary investment and trading business in hedge funds both domestically and internationally After that, Guo Shengbei moved between Huaxing Securities and Tianfeng Securities, serving as a core executive and responsible for proprietary trading business.

During this period, according to Guo Shengbei's recollection, he put forward many clear-cut views in the market, such as predicting in 2014 that China would experience a phase of a super bull market, and successfully forecasting the commodity bull market in 2016; in addition, he also predicted the U.S. stock bull and bond bear market and China's stock bear and bond bull market in 2018; the tech stock bull market in 2019; the evolution of the global landscape in 2020, and the global market's bottoming out and rebound, etc.

In 2022, after several ups and downs, Guo Shengbei returned to New York, restarting his hedge fund company on Wall Street and embarking on his "new journey" in Wall Street.

The Romance of a Science and Engineering Man — Explaining the Financial World with Mathematical Logic

As a trader who has been active in the market for 32 years, Guo Shengbei can be considered a "veteran."

As a pure science and engineering man, Guo Shengbei appears somewhat less articulate compared to some of the outspoken "stars" in the market — in every roadshow, he tirelessly discusses the financial theories he understands, attempting to better interpret the entire financial world from a mathematical logic perspective.

His reports lack sensational stories and particularly eye-catching unique viewpoints, which, in this era of information explosion, seems somewhat "the wine is good but the alley is deep."

However, for the entire financial market, there are indeed not many Chinese individuals like Guo Shengbei who possess 32 years of top institutional proprietary trading experience and practical operational experience in multiple locations including China, the U.S., and Japan.

To help the market hear more professional voices and understand the essence of trading from a global perspective, Wall Street Insights will launch "New York Talk Season 1" in 2024.

In the first season of the program, Guo Shengbei accurately predicted the liquidity shock caused by the U.S.-Japan carry trade in August 2024, and after Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, he also accurately predicted that "2025 will be a year of macro game" and that "Trump's tariffs may be both a means and an end," among many other core market variable factors.

His unique teaching style and profound, rigorous logical reasoning have made "New York Talk" Season 1 highly praised, with many domestic investors even spontaneously forming "study groups" to discuss and learn after studying the column content.

In 2025, "New York Talk" Season 2 will be launched as scheduled to meet everyone. In this episode, Guo Shengbei will continue to share what he has learned about the U.S. economic situation and the trading logic of top investment banks on Wall Street, helping you continue to understand the U.S., the Federal Reserve, and the thoughts of top institutions on Wall Street, assisting you in navigating the financial market and achieving success! Click the blue button "Subscribe Now" at the bottom of the page to subscribe to this column

Risk Warning and Disclaimer

The market has risks, and investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and does not take into account the specific investment goals, financial situation, or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article are suitable for their specific circumstances. Investment based on this is at one's own risk