Quants With Moderate AUM Have The Edge: Towers Watson

Quantitative equity managers, or quants, have fallen out of favor in recent years, losing popularity almost as quickly as they gained in the aftermath of the dot com bubble. But the current backlash against quants among many investors seems as unwarranted as the confidence investors had in them a decade ago.

“The history of financial markets is replete with humbled investors and the extraordinary success enjoyed by quantitative strategies proved to be short-lived,” says a recent report from risk management and consulting firm Towers Watson, but that doesn’t mean quant strategies are worthless. “We do not subscribe to the belief that traditional quantitative factors have been permanently arbitraged away.”

Quants: AUM rose too quickly

The problem is that quant strategies saw a...