Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Quants Run Wall Street Now

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 165 posts

Re: The Quants Run Wall Street Now

#32

Post by 10165 »

I know there was just a discussion yesterday on how amp is awful but it still is useful, e.g., to read WSJ articles.

   curl -o 1.htm https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-quants-run-wall-street-now-1495389108
   sed -n '/./{//,//p;}' 1.htm > 2.htm
FWIW, 2.htm has no amp elements, no Javascript, no images, no ads, no externally sourced resources and therefore no tracking.

Add links to non-essential images (cf. auto-loaded by browser). With available captions.

  sed -n '
  /./{/div class=.image/,/&
/;}
  /alt=/{s///;s/[\">]//g;/./s/.*/
above: &/;}
  /Href=/p;/
/p' 1.htm >> 2.htm

Re: The Quants Run Wall Street Now

#35

Post by kobeya »

jessriedel wrote: post #27

There's a plot where they differentiate "quant hedge funds" from "other hedge funds". How are they defining this? (To what extent is this just a matter of quant being sexy and more firms describing themselves as quant?)

Whether a computer does the analysis.

Re: The Quants Run Wall Street Now

#36

Post by cheez »

lisper wrote: post #28
cheez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part, execution does not require high math, but the modeling required to find arbitrage or alpha does. So for example, managing an index weight fund is simple on the face of it but when and how you choose to rebalance your portfolio can affect your drift. This is the part that requires high math. This is even more important if you're talking a billion dollar fund as opposed to a 100,000 personal account.

> the modeling required to find arbitrage or alpha does Not really. Even if everyone is just throwing darts, half of the players will beat the market, and the more players you have the more extreme the outliers will be. Of course, the converse is also true, but no one pays attention to the losers. Both Vegas and Wall Street prosper from this same principle.

I also think so, but... Gotta keep up the charade imo. Can't prove otherwise.

Re: The Quants Run Wall Street Now

#37

Post by PhantomGremlin »

10165 wrote: post #32

I know there was just a discussion yesterday on how amp is awful but it still is useful, e.g., to read WSJ articles. curl -o 1.htm https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-quants-run-wall-street-now-1495389108 sed -n '/./{/ /,/ /p;}' 1.htm > 2.htm FWIW, 2.htm has no amp elements, no Javascript, no images, no ads, no externally sourced resources and therefore no tracking. Add links to non-essential images (cf. auto-loaded…

This is excellent. Most times I'm willing to live with just the text.

The article had some pictures and graphs (see archive.li someone else posted). They were nice but they weren't essential.

Re: The Quants Run Wall Street Now

#38

Post by meddlepal »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #34

The value of something across the span of milliseconds has no meaning. At this temporal level of resolution it's just a gamble no different from games like poker. Why deploy brain power on trying to extract this value? What a waste of intelligence.

If you haven not been keeping up, since about sometime in the mid-1980's acquisition of Money became the defining virtue of goodness and success. That's all that matters now.

Re: The Quants Run Wall Street Now

#39

Post by vowelless »

lisper wrote: post #28
cheez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part, execution does not require high math, but the modeling required to find arbitrage or alpha does. So for example, managing an index weight fund is simple on the face of it but when and how you choose to rebalance your portfolio can affect your drift. This is the part that requires high math. This is even more important if you're talking a billion dollar fund as opposed to a 100,000 personal account.

> the modeling required to find arbitrage or alpha does Not really. Even if everyone is just throwing darts, half of the players will beat the market, and the more players you have the more extreme the outliers will be. Of course, the converse is also true, but no one pays attention to the losers. Both Vegas and Wall Street prosper from this same principle.

> half of the players will beat the market

For how long? And if it is for more than one sample (year), then how do you explain the continued success of places like Renaissance Technologies?

> Both Vegas and Wall Street prosper from this same principle.

I think poker is probably the closest thing in Vegas that matches Wall Street. Probably why it is so popular among quants.

Post reply on HN