Sharpe ratio
Can pod shops channel ‘organisational alpha’?
The tension between a firm and its managers can drag on returns. So far, there’s no perfect fix
Kurtosis optimisation gives portfolios a shock absorber
Hedge fund quant shows how an alternative to PCA makes risk management more robust
Clunky crypto markets serve quants well – can it continue?
Poor price discovery presents opportunities for systematic traders in super-trending markets
Sign prediction and sign regression
This paper proposes an approach whereby the loss function regularizes the errors in prediction in different ways.
Factor woes prove need for better timing – QuantZ’s Sharma
Investors should switch between factors as alphas change, says quant
Quants say they can fix value’s broken ratio
Price-to-book metric can be tailored to the new economy, researchers believe
What’s so special about time series momentum?
We find that the buy-and-hold (B&H) strategy for the S&P 500 index (^GSPC) for January 1950–April 2019 had a significantly higher return than that produced by time series momentum (TSM). However, TSM was superior in terms of the Sharpe ratio due to its…
Time to move on from mean-variance diversification
A new diversification measure appears to produce better results than mean-variance optimisation
Equally diversified or equally weighted?
New diversification measure enables construction of equally diversified portfolios
Eigenportfolios of US equities for the exponential correlation model
In this paper, the eigendecomposition of a Toeplitz matrix populated by an exponential function in order to model empirical correlations of US equity returns is investigated.
A closed-form solution for optimal mean-reverting strategies
The heat potentials method is used to find the optimal profit-taking and stop-loss levels
Sandbar's focus on idiosyncratic factors sets it apart from its peers in equity market‑neutral
With investors sometimes struggling to find hedge funds that deliver uncorrelated, consistent returns, Sandbar Asset Management stands out from its peers. Its success in running an equity market-neutral strategy is a reflection of its founder and chief…
Search for alpha in a volatile world
Alpha generation can be an elusive goal, particularly when trading volatility. Three different approaches to trading volatility were discussed by a panel looking at the role of systematic and carry strategies in finding profit in a high-volatility world
Structured products – The ART of risk transfer
Exploring the risk thrown up by autocallables has created a new family of structured products, offering diversification to investors while allowing their manufacturers room to extend their portfolios, writes Manvir Nijhar, co-head of equities and equity…
Winning investment strategies based on financial crisis indicators
The aim of this paper is to create systematic trading strategies built around several financial crisis indicators, which are based on the spectral properties of market dynamics.
Lessons from the Mortician: volatility modulation
Paul Tudor Jones II, Santhanam Nagarajan and Dario Villani show how to use volatility modulation
'Risk budget' touted to help investors avoid the herd
Keep spare risk capacity – rather than running close to limits – to exploit crises, researchers advise
The probability of backtest overfitting
The authors propose a general framework to assess the probability of backtest overfitting (PBO).
Where the smart money is
Sponsored Q&A: Jane Street, Societe Generale CIB, WisdomTree Europe
Giving the Omega ratio a new lease of life
Johnson-Omega could change the way financial firms measure portfolio performance
Johnson-Omega performance measure
Alexander Passow presents a portfolio performance measure that combines the omega measure with Johnson distributions