Investors moving past black box with quant investing
Quantitative investing is likely to return to investor's portfolios as they seek more uncorrelated investment options and move past seeing the strategy as a ‘black box' approach.
Man Investments Australia, managing director, Hersh Gandhi his group was seeking to demystify quantitative investing and said the style was very process driven, transparent and followed set models, risk profiles and trading systems.
He said investors were well aware of markets and were looking for non-correlated investments as a place to invest in market sell-offs but had moved away from fund of fund quantitative investments.
According to Gandhi these are likely to return with groups such as Man adopting new strategies that offer fund of fund investments along the line of a managed account.
"People think of them as co-mingled vehicles but the newer funds are adopting specific strategies where clients can choose from a menu of managers," Gandhi said.
He said this approach created a simple to explain investment strategy which had low correlation, was liquid and created a positive distribution of returns.
Gandhi said the group had only recently moved into retail and had attracted around $300 million in funds under management via platforms and was probably best known for its OM-IP funds first launched in 1997 as well as its sub-brands: AHL, Numeric Investors and FRM.
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