Bridgewater Associates

According to D. E. Shaw, RenTech and Other Legends: Hindsight is Not 2020

According to D. E. Shaw, RenTech and Other Legends: Hindsight is Not 2020

"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking."Henry Ford I couldn't find the exact reference, but sometime between about 2010 and 2015 I wrote (for TABB Group) that when the market regime eventually shifted from the core drivers of the long, low volatility period of the post-GFC era, many quant models would become disoriented and their performance would suffer. This is simply because the behavioral cues of the new chapter would not be embedded in the historical market data of the prior period upon which those models had been trained. Well, that scenario finally played out this year... So, instead of following the well-worn tradition of preparing a lengthy "Year in Review" post on market highlights and lowlights as we bring this historically bizarre and disorienting year to a close, I thought to let a series of illustrations from some of the world's most legendary players show you symbols for how their year appears to have gone (through Q3 2020) and, by implication, how broad groupings of strategies [...]

By Paul Rowady|2020-12-23T21:35:10-05:00December 22nd, 2020|For Subscribers|

AQR Capital Management: The Ominous Shapes of Strategy

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." - Joseph Campbell For 12 straight years beginning Q4 2001, AQR Capital Management, LLC (AQR) - one of the great and legendary quant hedge funds of the current era - grew equity positions until peaking at 2,346 (long equity) positions by Q4 2013. Since that time, AQR's long US equity book has found an ominously consistent plateau averaging 2,140 positions. Here, in what would normally seem to be a benign factoid, lie the seeds of the story for why AQR has been suffering performance challenges of late; and, apparently, performance challenges for the foreseeable future according to co-founder and front-man, Cliff Asness. We start that story with the exhibit, below, where Alphacution presents the full 72-quarter record of total 13F (long) positions for the lineage of AQR Capital Management entities beginning Q4 2001 and ending Q3 2019. With these first shapes, we want to highlight that stocks are the dominant product class, thereby implying that there is little [...]

By Paul Rowady|2020-08-17T07:14:02-04:00February 9th, 2020|For Subscribers|

More Bridgewater Associates: Modeling Ray Dalio’s Modeling

"Treat your life like a game." - Ray Dalio In many ways, aspects of this research are like playing a game of "Name That Tune." With a few snippets of data, we try to figure out what's going on with a trading or investment strategy - and by extension, the business strategy, too. Certainly, boosting the signal of a snippet or two of data can be done with contextual evidence; other snippets of data from neighboring strategies and players that help improve the accuracy of our interpretations. And yes, by now, this is all starting to sound a little rudimentary. "Of course. Obviously. Sure, that's been well known for a while..." But, though it now seems like years, it's only been eleven months since publishing our first "Hiding in Plain Sight" post. It's an understatement to say that we've learned a ton in that time because certain components of the landscape - a spectrum of strategies; zones and emerging rankings of competitors among them can now be seen with [...]