Battle of the Quants on Crowdsourcing Algo Developers and Data Scientists
New York in June 2017
Crowdsourcing in fund management and trading is the move to utilize anyone with an internet connection to participate in the research with the goal of finding new and better ways of trading. During the discussion the differing approaches being taken with the business models, and the technology, and the challenges each are facing.
CloudQuant is utilizing a partnership approach that allows the algo creators to build proprietary algos, backtest them, and to prove their worth. Once the algo owner is ready, he or she can submit the algo for funding. This works best at scale. Many data scientists can find ways to invest and trade but are unable to achieve the scales necessary to extract profits from the market. When CloudQuant licenses an algo it is with full intention of providing the capital required to achieve large scale trading.
The crowdsourcing approach is working well for multiple firms. Morgan Slade, a panel participant and CEO of CloudQuant, firmly believes that the market will continue to grow. “We are excited to have a growing number of quantitative partners join our ranks as crowd researchers. Our crowd researchers utilize our technology, support teams, data, oversight, and risk management. Crowd researches provide the trading strategies. Together we profit through a mutually beneficial trading strategy license agreement.”
Talent is coming from all over the globe. Those building algos are sometimes highly trained individuals with quantitative trading backgrounds. Sometimes they are also data scientists who are looking for new challenges. Sometimes they are software engineers. Sometimes accountants. The interesting fact is that with access to the backtesting and research tools anyone can now begin to test a trading strategy.
Moderator: Tom Ducrot, Founder, Fides + Ratio
Jonathan Larkin, CIO, Quantopian
J. Morgan Slade, CEO, CloudQuant
Martin Froehler, CEO, Quantiacs
Rich Brown, CEO, WorldQuant Virtual Research Center
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Learn more about the CloudQuant business model and how you can benefit from being a crowd researcher.
