The Fund
Your product is returns. Your business is assets. They want opposite things.
The brief
You run the firm. Five portfolio managers, each better at their own strategy than you will ever be, and two levers: how much risk each of them gets, and how big the fund is allowed to become. Every quarter you split a hundred units of risk between them — and a sixth bucket, capital returned to investors, which is the one that decides whether any of this still works in three years. Alpha decays with size: each pod has a capacity, and past it the returns simply stop being there. Meanwhile money arrives chasing your last good quarter, which is precisely when the strategy that earned it has run out of room. Starve a PM of risk and they leave, and their record leaves with them. Give investors a drawdown and they redeem into your worst quarter. The job is holding a business and a product that want opposite things.
How you play it
Split 100 units of risk across five pods each quarter — and one bucket nobody likes touching: capital handed back. Alpha decays with size, and money always arrives at the wrong moment.
The job: Hedge Fund CEO — Deciding how much risk each portfolio manager gets and how big the fund is allowed to be — two levers that everything else is downstream of.
What a hedge fund CEO actually does →What you're judged on
Every decision is marked to market server-side. These are the meters that move — run one to zero and the simulation ends there.
What it tests
No trivia — the simulation only asks what the chair actually has to know.
Where you learn this
This one is the arcade's own boss — it isn't the finale of a single game, it's what the whole arcade has been teaching. Liquidity, leverage, bank runs, systemic risk and moral hazard all arrive in the same sixty-two hours, and nothing gates it: sit down now, get overrun, and go find out why.
Browse the courses →Other chairs
The Weekend
Sixty-two hours to Tokyo's open. You cannot save everyone — and one of them you cannot lose.
The Structurer
Every note is a bond plus options. Pick the wrong shape and the client finds out at maturity.
The President
Every policy has two halves: what you do, and who pays. The bond market grades the second one.
The First Year
Twelve months on your own. No perfect month — only wiser and poorer ones.
The Newsroom
One shift on the data desk. Every story is a stats trap in disguise.
Mission Control
No options to pick — do the math, key in the number, bring them home.
The Policy Chair
You are the central bank. One rate, every quarter, a whole economy on the line.
The CFO's Chair
You run the firm's capital. Ten board meetings, one question every time: where does the cash go?
The Pit
You run the book. The tape moves, the Greeks bite, margin is real. Survive the session.
Your Own Worst Enemy
The market can't hurt you. You can. Ten moments, one enemy — the one making the decisions.
The Desk
Run a derivatives desk for one week — it does not stay calm.
Rotation Day
Ten desks, one stack of cards each. Sort them right — and never, ever misfile ethics.
The Expert Witness
Ten regression tables enter evidence. The significant one is usually the trap.
The War Room
The VaR says you're fine. The tail says otherwise. Ten audits — read which one is lying.