French systematic long/short equity hedge fund Quantology Capital Management’s flagship fund ended last month in positive territory, with the market neutral strategy withstanding the sharp stock market reversal during September.
French systematic long/short equity hedge fund Quantology Capital Management’s flagship fund ended last month in positive territory, with the market neutral strategy withstanding the sharp stock market reversal during September.
The Quantology Absolute Return strategy, a long/short quant hedge fund which trades Nasdaq and NYSE-listed stocks, generated a 0.5 per cent gain over the course of September, outflanking the Nasdaq-100 Total Return Index, which dived some 5.7 per cent.
Among the computer-based strategy’s best performing long bets were Australian software company Atlassian, and Datadog, the New York-based software-as-a-service data analytics platform provider. Solid gains were also provided by Grid Dynamics, an engineering IT services name, as well as west coast-based Beauty Health.
Meanwhile, short positions in Fastly and Zoom also paid off, with the quant fund generating alpha as these names lagged in September.
“The portfolio held up well in a shaky month, taking advantage of a high dispersion within equities,” the firm said in a strategy update.
The fund – which uses a number of market-agnostic, algorithm-based processes to generate returns from behavioural finance indicators, share price trends, and other stock signals within companies’ quarterly earnings data – is now roughly flat for the year. September’s rise was the 11th month out of 14 since inception that the strategy made gains as the S&P 500 fell, Quantology noted.
Last month, the firm announced it has hired Frans Harts as partner and head of sales. Harts, who was previously partner and head of sales and marketing at French quantitative investment manager KeyQuant, earlier held client services and business development roles at Winton Capital Management and JP Morgan Asset Management in London and New York.
