About
Origins: The genesis of our creation was catalyzed by Frank C. Meyer, founder of Glenwood Capital and early backer of Citadel Investment Group. Upon his retirement, three individuals made a quiet pilgrimage to Florida, united by shared experience and purpose: to explore new ventures beyond the traditional boundaries of finance.
The firm’s intellectual heritage traces to the early quantitative-finance community that emerged in Chicago during the 1990s. Frank Meyer, a pioneer in hedge-fund structuring and mentorship, provided formative guidance to figures within that community, including Ken Griffin during Citadel’s inception. In the early 2000s, his mentorship extended to our founder, who launched GreenLeaf Financial—a now-defunct equity and commodity hedge fund that achieved a net CAGR exceeding 18% during its lifespan. That lineage, philosophy, and mentorship ultimately culminated in the establishment of 3 Pilgrim LLC in 2013, an independent research firm inspired by the same spirit of disciplined innovation.
Over the subsequent decade, paths naturally diverged—a reflection of differing needs and necessary evolution. Age yields to youth, and ambition builds upon legacy; these are the stones upon which citadels are raised. From reflection comes renewal, the soil from which new structures rise. 3 Pilgrim LLC remains an independent entity, honoring the intellectual lineage that preceded it while charting an original course forward.
Where two founders remain in presence, one will always persist in spirit.
Who We Are
3 Pilgrim LLC is an independent research firm dedicated to addressing problems most consider intractable. Inspired by the wit and wisdom of Charlie Munger, as articulated in his seminal essay “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment”, we embrace the lollapalooza effect: the convergence of multiple cognitive biases and incentives as a lens for understanding complex systems.
We apply first-principles logic across the lollapalooza matrix—a multidimensional framework where behavioral, mathematical, and informational systems converge. Our work seeks to de-constrain mathematics through intuition; intuition that is all too often lost through excessive formalization. Such dynamic exploration has only recently become viable, enabled by advances in artificial intelligence and high-dimensional computational modeling. At its core, our research translates market psychology into explicit, testable frameworks, converting qualitative behavioral insight into quantitative, reproducible form.
We publish a small number of white papers—terse, highly technical works designed to document tractable models across disciplines, preserve methodological lineage, and contribute to the shared body of cross-disciplinary knowledge spanning finance, cognition, and mathematics.
Primary Focus
- Behavioral finance and market structure — exploring how human bias and institutional design shape systemic behavior.
- Market cognition and socio-psychic bias — modeling collective perception, narrative contagion, and feedback dynamics.
- Quantization of behavioral heuristics — converting intuitive decision patterns into formal, testable frameworks.
- High-dimensional topology, combinatorics, and field dynamics — mapping non-linear interactions to uncover emergent structure.
- The nature of duality and emergence — studying how opposing constructs yield self-organizing systems.
Purpose
To transform behavioral intuition into formal structure. We are independent, apolitical, and indifferent to fashion—concerned only with what works, and why. Our aim is to question that which most assume to be unquestionable.