BILLIONS S3E3: Axe Capital is Hiring a Quant

We are getting inspiration from BILLIONS season 3 episode 3 to explain fintech and alternative investments. Taylor has a plan: hire a quant (quantitative analyst) and move into algo (algorithmic) trading, but Wags doesn't like it. Who's going to win?

Taylor Mason's (Asia Kate Dillon) is now firmly in charge as a Chief Investment Officer as Bobby Axelrod is not allowed to trade. Wags (David Costabile) looks like he is playing along, but he's trying as hard as possible to not get a quant on the payroll of Axe Capital.
We are reviewing some key concepts and a famous figure from the Quant world
👉 Who are quants and what they do in finance
👉 Algorithmic trading
👉 Jim Simons
👉 Renaissance Technologies and the Medallion Fund

ABOUT THE BILLIONS SERIES
Emmy® and Golden Globe® winners Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis star in a complex drama about power politics in the world of New York high finance. Shrewd, savvy U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Giamatti) and the brilliant, ambitious hedge fund king Bobby "Axe" Axelrod (Lewis) are on an explosive collision course, with each using all of his considerable smarts, power and influence to outmanoeuvre the other. The stakes are in the billions in this timely, provocative series.

ABOUT US
FintechOrama is about exploring and celebrating the Fintech world in a visual way
In Ancient Greek ‘orama’ means ‘sight’ or ‘spectacle’. We plan to make the world of finance a meaningful spectacle by debunking the myths, interviewing the experts, discovering the rising stars, and finding purpose.

[JosueExplores]

Quant is another way of taking a wild fucking guess... with math 😂

[judyl.]

0:05 level up: (especially in a role-playing game) progress to the next level.
0:30 Algo trading: quicker than human
1:05 hedge fund replicator: historical performance to decompose the returns to listed instruments.
1:50 many fintech solutions.

[pegion]

I built a product keeping axe and Taylor in mind .. one for fundamental .. other for technical .. am glad I watched this series .. can't wait for next ..

[MarksmanSpecialist]

interesting, quants are another fancy word for analysts guessing with math lol...

[jamvan]

It's hard to believe that a fund of that size would not have at least a few quants to help out.

[naanull]

Cool... Though it's not Renaissance that has that investment track record, but only the Medallion Fund, which is closed to outside investors.

[LULLUL]

I have no idea what the graph at 0:45 is supposed to mean but looking at Medallions performance (The man who solved the market p331) the return of 1dollar net of fees from 1988-1995 is already 9.91dollars ? So I have no idea why your chart would show the SP outperforming jimmy? His average performance over a 30 year period is freaking 39.1% NET of FEES, investing 1 dollar in 1988 amounts to more than 20K today and a ridiculous 4mil before fees

[piotr]

without no rebalancing linear regression seems to be enought for this problem, if so in case of changing structure of portfolio it would be also enought to create linear model where differences between stocks weights in portfolio (weights are model coefficients) differs from period to period by constant amount of 5% for example, you can do this with GAMS software and CPLEX solver, additional problem is that number of time periods in dataset (returns reported with 1 month interval I guess) is much lower then number of companies, so you have to reduce dimensionality by PCA or use shrinkage regularization technique like Lasso or Elastic-Net

[TsarOfRuss]

So, if i want to be rich, i must be creative, i have to come up with something extra-ordinary!
Challenge accepted!
Wait, one can just buy one of this trading softwares to do "Quant" job.. right??? since its already programmed

[MikeKleinsteuber]

There are loads of qunts in hedge funds

[mossadagent]

Sorry, I'm an idiot, but could you explain the graph at 0.45? I thought renaissance was the most successful hedge fund in history, how come it's getting beaten by the S&P 500?

[patrickmuwowo]

I would say DE SHAW is the quant of all quants. Some might even say that he is the father of quantative trading...

[shananalax]

The growth of a dollar slide looks off to me. I don’t get why it would assume a 40% management fee and a 0% performance fee.

[circle_line]

Ive watched so many of your vids, the music you use is now stuck in my head

[OlivierBOSSARD]

Another great video ... again! Loving it!!! 🤗

[InvestOrama]

Hope you enjoy this one - which scene of #billions should we do next?

[scottwilliams]

We will see how quant models work in this depression.

[pppinto]

What? I assumed to assume that HEDGE FUNDS ONLY HIRE QUANTS. Whom do they hire if not for quants?

[fobipearl]

I dont know anything on quantitative analysis. Pls how can I learn from the "groundup"?

[farifurido]

I just want to start trading but Quant just captures my desires and I like Python and R should I blow the market?