Sometimes dubbed the rocket scientists of Wall Street the meaning of quantitative analysts often takes on a broad meaning. Quant is a fairly broad term honestly, but roughly means someone who takes an extremely mathematical approach to the markets. While some quants use Einstein level math there are some practical lessons you can take away to use in your own portfolio.
More than anything quantitative analysts apply a rigid rules based approach to the markets. They have specific buy and sell signals that they adhere to religiously and consistently. This is where their great returns come from(if their algorithms are correct). While some get blamed for things like the flash crash where the DOW dropped 9% in minutes it would be wrong to say that it was the strangest thing to ever happen in market history. A signal for a quant could be something as simple as the 200 day moving average or as complex as analyzing S&P 500 futures contracts volume and expiration and placing an order nanoseconds before the futures expire and pocketing the spread, which is the high frequency trading world.
So how can you apply this? Well a buy and hold strategy sounds great in theory, but its harder to stick to in practice. Sure its easy to say when the market has not had a down year since 2008, but it would have been really hard to hold onto your portfolio is 2008 when the US equity market shed about 40%. If you haven’t experienced a massive drawdown like that imagine draining half of your savings.
So if you are someone who can’t weather massive drawdowns, and we don’t blame you if that is the case, consider taking a rules based approach. It is great to have an investment plan that you can stick to and might even help you sleep better at night. Here is a simple rule to get you to start thinking about what you might want to do:
Apply a short, medium, and long term moving average to your portfolio. When conducting your rebalancing, best done once a year for tax benefits, tilt most towards the assets in upward trend above the moving averages, more towards the one that are not trending as strongly above one or two of the moving averages, and least towards those in a downtrend under the moving averages.
Note: This can be considered a trend following approach and is a popular investment style that may or may not suit you. Over time strategies go in an out of favor so its often wise to pick a strategy that you understand and believe in and stick with it over the long term.
Building wealth takes strong discipline and taking your emotions out of investing by applying rules to a strategy that works can often help mitigate bad decisions.
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