HF vs AM

Hello guys,

Is it true that traditional non quant high frequency hedge funds are going to slowly wither away? Seems like high frequency quantitative algos largely dominate the HF scene. How big is the more qualitative 1-3 month time horizon HF scene nowadays (like event driven or macro strategies)? And how will that market share continue to change from your perspectives? I’m at a summer program at an asset management firm right now (not a college internship) and my MD has told me that multi asset AM / portfolio management will be able to maintain profitability as HF profits and fees get squeezed out. What are your thoughts on this?

5 Comments
 

Please explain why you think 'non quant high frequency' HFs are going to die out? And what's the definition of a non-quant high frequency firm? If you're doing HFT, you're already using quant in some form (I get that some HFT incorporate some discretionary decisions). And why do you jump to talking about 1- 3 month time horizon funds? Those aren't HFT

 

I worded the phrase badly - by non quant high frequency I meant non (quant high frequency), which would be strategies like merger arbitrage (though I'm not sure if even that's done through algos nowadays...)

From my understanding, the market share of high-frequency algorithmic trading in the HF industry as a whole has grown significantly. "Traditional" day traders can't compete with these algorithms that execute thousands of traders per second. Therefore fund managers/traders who aren't algorithm wizards are pushed out to longer time horizons (such as 1-3 months). 

I was wondering whether HF will still be as attractive as it has been for the past ~20 years for those who don't want to be building algorithms and writing code. 

 
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