WorldQuant

WorldQuant, LLC was founded in 2007[12][4] as a quantitative investment management firm spun out of Millennium Management[13] in New York City.[8] Prior to forming WorldQuant, its Belarus-born[14] founder Igor Tulchinsky (* 1966[15]) had worked at Millennium as a portfolio manager since 1995. With a focus on statistical arbitrage,[7][16] Tulchinsky's team of researchers and quantitative traders[17] joined him at WorldQuant with the goal of creating a "stand-alone brand to help recruit quantitative talent". The new fund continued to use Millennium's corporate infrastructure and trading platform.[8]

By 2014, WorldQuant had officially launched the WorldQuant Challenge, with around 30,000 people taking part by May 2016. The year-round competition allows contestants to use WorldQuant's WebSim platform, an online "financial market simulation tool", to create their own algorithms, or "Alphas", in an effort to predict behavior in the stock market.[12] The challenge resulted in 7,000 active users on the WebSim platform by March 2017, with 450 of those users hired as part-time research consultants[6] through WorldQuant’s Research Consultant program.[12]

By April 2015, WorldQuant had 400 employees responsible for managing $4 billion of Millennium's funds, equating to approximately 15% of Millennium’s total assets under management. WorldQuant's business model continued to rely on data analysis to predict stock market behavior, with researchers analyzing "thousands of data sets to create so-called trading signals." Explains the Wall Street Journal, "A separate team focused on portfolio construction and management sorts through and combines [the trading signals], turning them into models. Many such models, which [are] be continuously adjusted, [make] up a fund."[8] By May 2016, WorldQuant had 18 offices with 450 professionals working as researchers, portfolio managers, and technologists.[12]

In February 2017 WorldQuant announced the launch of WorldQuant Accelerator, an independent portfolio manager platform to compete with other open source trading platforms, mainly Numerai, QuantConnect & Quantopian.[10] At the time of its launch the new platform had 15 independent teams,[7] with plans outlined to double that number over the next two years. The new platform allowed WorldQuant's independent portfolio managers to access WorldQuant technology such as back-testing technologies and impact modeling.[10] The platform also allowed managers to retain the rights to their algorithms, a detail that Bloomberg said was "rare in the industry" and "could help WorldQuant compete for the top minds."[7]

By April 2017 WorldQuant managed more than $5 billion[4] for Millennium Management.[9] Although WorldQuant had never published performance numbers publicly, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2017 that the firm had "never had a down year."[4]

In 2015 the WorldQuant Foundation launched WorldQuant University, a free online master's degree program in financial engineering.[21][11]

In late 2014 Tulchinsky[8] founded WorldQuant Ventures.[22][23] Organized separately from WorldQuant[16] as Tulchinsky's own angel investment fund, the firm's focus is on data and finance companies[22] in "everything from artificial intelligence to water management."[16] 2016 investments included Cycle Computing,[22] Benzinga,[16] and untapt,[24] while 2017 investments included the Canadian research company Canalyst.[25]