Quantbot and Schonfeld- a Successful Partnership
On January 28th, Paul White, Our CEO and Co-founder, took the stage once again- this time on a more comfortable Miami day to join Ryan Tolkin, CEO and CIO of Schonfeld at the iConnections MFA Conference fireside chat. Together, they shared insights on the evolution of our nearly two decade-long successful partnership. The conversation centered on key factors that have driven their success.
During the discussion, Paul outlined his philosophy for building a thriving quant business, encapsulated in what he calls the “3 Ps.” These foundational pillars- People, Platform, and Partners- have been instrumental in Quantbot’s success.
The first P is People, clearly important to any business but even more so with the Intellectual Property heavy quant business. At Quantbot we pride ourselves on having an environment where people can grow their careers within the firm, moving between areas and specialities whilst progressing and adding value to overall performance. The difference between keeping a team together for a few years versus 5, 10 and in our case sometimes 25+ is measured on a logarithmic scale.
P 2 is Platform, this is the technology, data, tools and the business process capabilities needed to take ideas from the whiteboard through development, research, simulation and ultimately to live trading. All done at scale, globally without errors.
Finally, the last P is Partners as in order to get the maximum results from the first two Ps you will need to find the right partners to provide capital, back office, legal/compliance, financing, PB and execution services. Here Schonfeld has been an excellent partner in helping Quantbot focus on the alpha research side of building a successful business globally while Schonfeld helps secure the right external relationships for non IP functions. The other core partner for Quantbot is Code Willing who now handle the majority of Quantbot’s critical quant technology platform allowing the firm’s people to focus on alpha research.
Paul concludes that when you get all three Ps right- People, Platform, and Partners- you meet the minimum required for operating a successful quant business. Once that foundation is set, you should be able to run every day and now you can focus on finding the quant IP needed to generate real alpha and that’s where the real fun begins.
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