A mere five quant traders account for 1 billion shares of volume per day, in aggregate, in the United States alone. The Quant Universe is not well known to the broader investing public. The TABB Group, a research and advisory firm focused exclusively on the capital markets, estimates that, in 2008, approximately 58 percent of all buy‐side orders were algorithmically traded. The Aite Group published a study in early 2009 indicating that more than 60 percent of U.S. equity transactions are attributable to short‐term quant traders.
The large presence of quants is not limited to equities. As of August 2012, Newedge estimates that the amount of quantitative futures money undermanagement was $282.3 billion. Hedge funds are private investment pools that are accessible only to sophisticated, wealthy individual or institutional clients. With such size and extremes of success and failure, it is not surprising that quants take their share of headlines in the financial press. And though most press coverage of quant seems to be markedly negative, this is not always the case.
Quant traders slice their orders into many small pieces to improve both the cost and efficiency of the execution process. By placing many small orders, other investors who might have different views or needs can also get their own executions improved. Quants typically make markets more efficient for other participants by providing liquidity when other traders’ needs cause a temporary imbalance in the supply and demand for a security. The main inefficiencies that quants eliminate (and, thereby, profit from) are not absolute and unassailable, but rather are probabilistic and require risk taking…
Blackbox_auto1
Book
Inside the Black Box: A Simple Guide to Quantitative and High Frequency Trading, 2nd Edition