Felix Bauckholt: The quant trader on an H1B visa killed by border police
Who was Felix Bauckholt, the quant trader on an allegedly expired H1B visa who died after a shoot-out at the Vermont-Canada border this week?
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Bauckholt's still live LinkedIn profile says he worked in the New York office of Tower Research Capital, the high frequency trading firm. Tower Research didn't respond to a request to comment on Bauckholt's recent employment status, but the alleged expiry of his visa suggests he may no longer have been working there.
Tower Research Capital is a high frequency market maker and prop trading firm that operates high speed trading strategies. US government data suggests that two people at Tower Research have had H1B visas renewed this year: a head of data on a base salary of $350k and a quant trader on a base salary of $165k. It has 1,200 employees in total.
Bauckholt's LinkedIn profile says he joined Tower in October 2021 after two years at Radix Trading. He also completed a Jane Street internship in 2018. Jane Street interns now earn around $20k a month.
Bauckholt graduated from Canada's university of Waterloo with a bachelor's in mathematics. In 2014 and 2015 he appears to have won gold and bronze prizes respectively in the International Mathematics Olympiad.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Bauckholt was with a female passenger who initiated the border shooting, and that he fired at border agents himself. A report in the Vermont Daily Chronicle says that David Maland, a border agent, was also killed.
Equally unconfirmed reports suggest that Bauckholt was transgender and used the name Ophelia.
The shooting comes amidst renewed debate about the role of H1B visas. Elon Musk is a fan of H1B visas, which he says are the reason that he and other "critical people" are in the US. President Trump has a history of denigrating H1B visas, but seems to have softened that position.
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