Wall Street quants struggle to recover their former edge
AUG 20, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024603
New York Times : Until the Wall Street crash of 2008 and the worldwide recession that ensued, the financial analysts known as quants were in high demand. The algorithms they devised, running on high-speed computers, gave the firms that employed them an edge. Now, as the New York Times‘s Julie Creswell reports, the quants, many of whom have physics PhDs, are struggling to recover that edge. Bucking the trend, however, is Jim Simons, a former field theorist and the founder and CEO of Renaissance Technologies. Last year, his firm’s Medallion fund made $1 billion in profits, the highest of any hedge fund.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
