Quant hedge fund firm DE Shaw's statistical arbitrage Valence fund has started the year strongly with a 9% Q1 gain, beating the average 5% hedge fund gain for the first three months of the year, but falling shy of the S&P 500's 10% increase, according to a report by Business Insider.

The fund, which put on 3.2% in March alone, is a smaller vehicle than the $60bn firm's flagship Composite fund, which includes both non-quant and systematic strategies.

The report cites unnamed sources as revealing that quant rival Two Sigma's Spectrum fund returned 3.5% in Q1, having gained 8.6% last year, while Renaissance Technologies's main external fund, the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, was up 4.8% in the first three months of the year.