Synopsis
After years of being outgunned and outclassed by computer-driven quantitative strategies, human stock-pickers climbed back on top in 2020.
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At the same time, macro managers, many of whom have complained about years of low volatility, finally got what they wanted.
By Hema Parmar, Katherine Burton and Nishant Kumar
Turns out, the hedge fund industry’s swashbucklers haven’t been made obsolete by the machines just yet.
After years of being outgunned and outclassed by computer-driven quantitative strategies, human stock-pickers climbed back on top in 2020. The dizzying gyrations of the pandemic-stricken year humbled even the most sophisticated of quants notably behemoths Renaissance Technologies and Two Sigma whose trading models were thrown off by swings their computers had never seen before.