Windforce Capital Quantitative Fund
Windforce Capital Hedge Fund Renaissance Technologies Credit Suisse
Windforce Ventures
New York
In the course of identifying profit opportunities analyzes an enormous amount of data associated with tens of thousands of financial instruments, along with various factors not associated with any one such instrument. Data is obtained from many countries throughout the world, and covers a wide range of asset classes. When this analytical process yields a new model the firm believes to be of predictive value, it becomes eligible for deployment within one or more trading strategies, in some cases along with a dozen or more other models involving some of the same financial instruments, but arising from different market anomalies.
The firm’s proprietary optimization technology was designed with the objective of maximizing expected return while controlling the aggregate risk associated with a portfolio that may in some cases include simultaneous positions in several thousand securities. Rather than consider each transaction in isolation, the firm’s portfolio optimization software is designed to account for complex interrelationships among a large set of financial instruments that may range over a number of different asset classes. In many cases, the firm’s optimization algorithms are able to enhance risk-adjusted returns not only through conventional diversification, but by establishing offsetting exposures to various risk factors at the portfolio level.
Portfolios are often reoptimized on a more-or-less continuous basis, with a steady stream of trades executed to take advantage of newly emerging potential profit opportunities and/or to manage various forms of dynamically varying risk. Time-sensitive trading decisions are often made very rapidly using real-time data obtained from various sources throughout the world’s financial markets. The firm trades on nearly a 24-hour basis, and typically executes tens of thousands of transactions per day.
We see investment potential in small but widespread mispricings of securities. Active strategies can play a key role in meeting investment objectives. Asset prices occasionally deviate from values implied by underlying fundamentals, and active management can improve returns by positioning a portfolio to profit from an eventual return to fundamentals. These deviations from fair values create opportunities that our processes are designed to identify and exploit. Because these are patterns that persist over time, rather than fleeting trends, we are confident that our processes can continue to outperform over the long term.
Our bottom-up approach combines the principles of valuation theory and behavioral finance with the skill and judgment of our investment professionals. Team members— averaging 25 years of investment experience and bringing diverse perspectives, including university professors, engineers, physicists and economists – have worked smoothly together through a wide range of market conditions.
Our proprietary optimization process generates diversified portfolios across a large number of stocks. And by constraining risks such as size, sector/industry, and deviation from benchmark, while vigilantly focusing on liquidity and transactions costs, we believe we can target alpha generation more effectively.
Windforce Capital Quantitative Fund Windforce
Windforce Capital Hedge Fund Renaissance Technologies Credit Suisse
Ventures Windforce Capital Windforce
Windforce Capital Quantitative Fund
Windforce Capital Hedge Fund Renaissance Technologies Credit Suisse
Ventures
Windforce Facebook
Windforce Capital Quantitative Fund Windforce
Windforce Capital Hedge Fund Renaissance Technologies Credit Suisse
Ventures Windforce Capital Windforce
Windforce Capital Quantitative Fund
Windforce Capital Hedge Fund Renaissance Technologies Credit Suisse
But for now, the bullish case is not only intact, it’s strong. A vibrant stateside economy will provide strong support for U.S. stocks, while Europe’s woes will create some compelling bargains. (For more, see 25 Stock Picks for 2015 and Bargains in International Stocks and Funds for 2015.) Analysts expect earnings growth in 2015 of 8% to 10%, on average, for companies in the S&P 500. With shares in the broad market selling at 16 times estimated 2015 earnings, prices of U.S. stocks carry a slight premium, but are nowhere near the peak levels of past market tops. And plenty of themes—from lower oil prices to a rising dollar to a stronger consumer—could pay off for investors in 2015.
Windforce Capital Quantitative Fund Windforce
Windforce Capital Hedge Fund Renaissance Technologies Credit Suisse
Windforce Capital Windforce
Windforce Capital Quantitative Fund
Windforce Capital Hedge Fund Renaissance Technologies Credit Suisse
Technology is an integral part of the trading strategies, corporate functions and life in general at Two Sigma. To us, technology is a profit center, not merely a cost item, and it continues to be a driving force behind our company structure. Each day, we work in small teams to develop and improve analytical and measurement tools for the financial markets, and we encourage collaboration— a structure that seems rare in the financial field. In fact, many have observed that we look and feel a lot like a software firm.”
Relative value arbitrage strategies take advantage of relative discrepancies in price between securities. The price discrepancy can occur due to mispricing of securities compared to related securities, the underlying security or the market overall. Hedge fund managers can use various types of analysis to identify price discrepancies in securities, including mathematical, technical or fundamental techniques.[49] Relative value is often used as a synonym for market neutral, as strategies in this category typically have very little or no directional market exposure to the market as a whole.[50] Other relative value sub-strategies include:
- Fixed income arbitrage: exploit pricing inefficiencies between related fixed income securities.
- Equity market neutral: exploits differences in stock prices by being long and short in stocks within the same sector, industry, market capitalization, country, which also creates a hedge against broader market factors.
- Convertible arbitrage: exploit pricing inefficiencies between convertible securities and the corresponding stocks.
- Asset-backed securities (Fixed-Income asset-backed): fixed income arbitrage strategy using asset-backed securities.
- Credit long / short: the same as long / short equity but in credit markets instead of equity markets.
- Statistical arbitrage: identifying pricing inefficiencies between securities through mathematical modeling techniques
- Volatility arbitrage: exploit the change in implied volatility instead of the change in price.
- Yield alternatives: non-fixed income arbitrage strategies based on the yield instead of the price.
- Regulatory arbitrage: the practice of taking advantage of regulatory differences between two or more markets.
- Risk arbitrage: exploiting market discrepancies between acquisition price and stock price
Uber Technologies Inc. is buying digital-navigation technology and hiring employees from Microsoft Corp., furthering the car-hailing company’s pursuit to control the mapping that powers its app.
The companies confirmed Monday a deal in which Uber would acquire certain assets related to street imaging and 3-D views used by Microsoft’s Bing Maps service.
Uber is also offering jobs to roughly 100 Microsoft employees, said people familiar with the companies’ deal.
Microsoft and Uber didn’t disclose terms of their agreement, which was earlier reported by tech news outlets including TechCrunch.
The deal could help Uber lessen its reliance on Google Inc. and Apple Inc., whose mapping technologies help power the ride-sharing app. The company is trying to wean itself off those outside technologies as Uber branches into competing areas such as delivery services and self-driving cars.
See the top 100 hedge funds by clicking here.
Equities dominated Barron’s Penta top 100 hedge fund rankings for the second straight year on the back of a record-breaking bull market now well into its seventh year. Once again, Larry Robbins’ Glenview Offshore Opportunity fund claimed the No. 1 spot, with an impressive three-year annualized gain of 57%.
Even with the recent gyrations in equity markets, stockpicker Robbins is bullish.
“The market continues to show favorable conditions, including valuations that remain attractive, excessive corporate cash balances, and underlevered balance sheets,” says Robbins. What’s more, he sees corporate executives and boards more open to share repurchases, capital improvements, and acquisitions.
Two other positives: Robbins expects the economy to grow at a solid rate and sees systemic risk ratcheted down by central bank and regulatory policies.
Accordingly, he continues to find opportunities, noting that 40% of his top 20 performers last year were new to his portfolio. For example, he established a 14% stake in the country’s largest operator of animal hospitals — VCA (ticker: WOOF). He sees the industry as defensive, and the shares cheap at 14.5 times 2015 earnings, and expects top-line expansion of 5% to 6% for the business after several years of dormant growth following the financial crisis. VCA is now in the midst of a $400 million share buyback; the company is making more acquisitions, and the stock has soared from $32 to $53 since Robbins moved in just two quarters ago.
The stellar returns of Robbins and others on our Best 100 list stand out in a year when oil prices plummeted, the U.S. dollar surged, the Federal Reserve kept bond investors on edge, and the Cold War suddenly heated up in Ukraine. Such challenges proved difficult for many funds. Many high-caliber firms didn’t qualify for our list this year, including Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital, Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global, and Paul Singer’s Elliott Management.