Wall Street brings sophisticated Quant Trading to the masses
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Wall Street’s favorite new way of making money is selling sophisticated investing strategies to Main Street.JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other banks are competing to sell programs that systematically execute trades based on preset rules. Hedge funds and others have long deployed such quant-trading strategies, but now pension funds, endowments, family offices and others are embracing them.Asset managers are also seeing a surge in interest in the strategies from wealthy investors.Fueling interest in these trading products, which banks call quantitative investment strategies, or QIS: fear that traditional investment approaches can’t keep up in the age of artificial intelligence.“The speed of the market is increasing, and we don’t have conviction about managers who mainly rely on fundamental analysis,” says Elmer Huh, chief investment officer of the Murdock Trust, a foundation in the Pacific Northwest.
“We think we can adapt a lot quicker with a quantitative approach.”Since December, the foundation has shifted 3% of its $2.1 billion investment portfolio to QIS funds managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management.Bank trading units now manage about $850 billion in QIS programs globally, up from $362 billion five years ago, according to Premialab, which helps institutions analyze systematic market-data strategies. These trades often rely on borrowed money, or leverage, to amplify returns, meaning they represent more than $1 trillion, enough to move markets, Premialab says.Investors contact a salesperson or even go to a bank’s website and chose from various quant strategies.
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