Quant funds still lack one human power…imagination

Michael Weinberg is Managing Director, Head of Hedge Funds & Alternative Alpha at APG, a leading Dutch pension provider. He is also Adjunct Professor of Economics and Finance at Columbia Business School. Weinberg spends a lot of time looking at AI-focused investment strategies, also known as Autonomous Learning Investment Strategies (ALIS). These are strategies that combine big data, data science and machine learning techniques, which, coupled with ever more powerful and cheaper computing power and storage, are pushing the envelope in terms of what is possible in quant trading.

Weinberg: “Nevertheless, we still firmly believe in ‘person plus machine’. In our experience, those strategies where the coders and the portfolio managers have left the machines to do everything themselves, may have succeeded initially but over time they generally don’t. We would expect the dynamic to continue to be person plus machine.”

APG practices what it preaches when it comes to the power of AI. It is part of the SDI Asset Owner Platform alongside fellow heavyweight investors AustralianSuper, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation and PGGM.

The platform is committed to accelerating the market adoption of Sustainable Development Investments (SDIs). With ESG such a key focus for institutional investors, the platform utilises an AI engine developed by Entis, an APG affiliated entity, to create a new SDI standard for sustainable investing.

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