I'm not sure about that. If a $2bn hedge fund finds 100 different "alpha strategies" for turning $20k into $200k, that's still just 1% to their bottom line. Probably not worth the time.

That's $20,000,000 which is enough to warrant at least 10 people working on it.

Remember that a hedge fund only sees 20% of the profit that it generates on behalf of its investors, and a large part of that goes into staffing and infrastructure costs, not to mention that quant traders like to be paid sizable bonuses (and therefore would not want to work on a trade with a small upside).

I find it extremely unlikely (almost inconceivable, in fact) that a hedge fund would divert 10 researchers to work on a trade with $20m of potential upside.

"Standard" hedge fund compensation is 2-and-20 (2% of funds under management and 20% of gains), so a $2B fund would yield $40M in the 2% management fee. That's the "keep the lights on money".

Ten people, not ten researchers, but that would be towards the upper limit. Point is, $20M is nothing to sneer at, even for a billion dollar hedge fund.