Elie Ayache

Co-Founder & CEO

Elie is the initiator of ITO33. He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique de Paris in 1987. Speaking of his 8 years of experience as a volatility trader, Elie says it was just “a shortcut” into options science. Banks in those days thought they needed top engineers to deal with options. Dealing options was another story, but Elie did not mind the ellipsis, as long as he came full circle, and finally became an engineer after long being an options trader.

Elie’s shortest cut was his first day on the floor: October 19, 1987, a day marked by a huge, unpredictable crash of the stock market that shook the global finance industry. From that first day, Elie learned that what happened then could happen any day. Yet that day was so exceptional that even if you were to replay it some other day, you would not get the same result. The same would hold for any other day. This completely ruled out the notion of “truth” in the markets as something you can think twice about, let alone try to reproduce, simulate or even represent by a model or algorithm. Traders need tools to help them speak everyday language, not a wizard to preach the truth to them once and for all.

Besides a few other books and many articles, Elie published The Blank Swan at Wiley in 2010.