Note: this article points to the Legacy Version of Quantiacs. Please check more recent material on the new version of Quantiacs: get started, simple bitcoin algorithm, machine learning example and optimizer.
Quantiacs is running its 14th algorithmic trading contest. Here’s why we continue our mission and break the rules of the quant industry.
The hedge fund industry is changing fast. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a disruption which started five years ago. Hedge fund liquidations soared in the first quarter of 2020 to more than 300. The financial services industry is undergoing the most radical transformation since the financial crisis. Many funds have struggled to deliver top returns. The impact of social distancing measures and travel restrictions on fund raising has been dramatic. The FinTech industry overall is looking for new pathways to successful models and services.
In this rapidly evolving landscape the vision of the Quantiacs ecosystem remains the same: remove barriers to talent, provide direct access to data and cutting-edge technology and give to quants all over the world the opportunity to get funded for their ideas and skills.
The quants who take part to our contests and won have received so far 30.5 millions of US dollars in allocations to their trading systems since inception in summer of 2014 when our first contest took place.
Quantiacs users have different backgrounds: graduates from top US universities, tech specialists from Silicon Valley, math wizards from research institutes in India, experienced engineers from Brazil. Some users prefer to stay anonymous and submit high-quality predictions. All of them however have three traits in common: passion for finance and developing trading algorithms on real data; outstanding skills in mathematics, statistics and computer science; the desire to break the rules and bypass the traditional quant path.
Until same years ago, a talented aspiring quant had only one option to follow his dream: apply to a quantitative hedge fund for a research role, pass a complicated selection process which could take up to several months, work hard for many years and finally get a lucrative salary as a reward to his talent. Yet, the lion’s share of the profits went normally to the hedge fund managers and not the quants who developed the algorithms. Moreover, working as a quant at Wall Street leaves no time for another professional activity.
Quantiacs breaks the rules and offers to the quants a straightforward alternative: download for free data and software locally to your machine, code an algo, take part to a contest and get funded for your ideas without leaving your current job. For the quant there is no downside risk as payments are done when the algorithm performs and delivers a profit.
Winning a Quantiacs contest is not the only way to get funded; we constantly monitor trading systems with a good track record and connect quants to capital.
The community is growing and the quality of the algorithms is impressive. We are excited to watch the ecosystem develop and look forward to see new winners and connect them to capital!
