macrocephalopod

Strategies work until they don’t, until it gets arbed out, until the strategy gets flooded with capital, etc. But the best quant managers will find the next big opps - always. Never ever redeem from a top quant fund. You’ll never get back in again & you’ll regret it.

Unless of course top quant funds have issues of their own. And I'm not sure about "always" :) but yes, gathering uncorrelated strategies makes sense, as well as assuming a short longevity for the working ones

1 trick ponies are self evident. They present that way, they present as narrow specialists & there’s no mystery for the LPs that they’re done when the strategy sunsets, e.g. merger arb in late 90s, convert arb in early 2000s. I consider elite vol generalists to be evergreen.

I agree with this except I would say “big multi strats” instead of “big quant funds”. If you are doing equity l/s, fixed income rv, vol arb, convert arb etc as well as quant you have a much more diversified revenue stream and better opportunities to pivot when one stops working.

Where are people drawing the line on what is and isn't a "quant fund" these days?

I often hear Citadel referred to as a quant fund which is not strictly accurate (lots of discretionary traders) but not completely inaccurate (lots of quant all over the place, eg to hedge factors in their long/short book or in the central risk book).

Funds like Brevan and Rokos have big quant teams even though the main strategy is clearly not quant (got to build those curves and price those derivatives) and I hear they are looking more at systematic nowadays.