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BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

CMU Master in Computational Finance Advisory Board Meeting

On February 7th, our CIO, Ashar Mahboob, participated in the CMU MSCF Finance Advisory Board Meeting, contributing to the program’s growth and expanding resources for prospective students.

His dedication to the board was recognized, particularly for the integration of Quantbot mentors and the Code Willing Platform, both of which have significantly enhanced classroom experiences and Datathon competitions.

A key discussion point was the impact of the CodeWilling platform and Data Store on student learning. The platform is seamlessly integrated into coursework, offering an engaging experience, while the Data Store provides invaluable real-world data, equipping students with essential tools for success.

Additionally, the conversation highlighted the need for expanding data availability. Professor Chad Schaffer, a strong advocate for the CodeWilling platform, emphasized the importance of increasing datasets within the CMU Data Store to further enrich student learning.

Ashar’s participation underscores our commitment to fostering innovation in finance education, ensuring students have access to cutting-edge tools and industry-relevant resources.

We’re excited to see how this program continues to evolve, bringing even more opportunities for students to engage with real-world data, industry mentors, and innovative technology.

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

Battle Fin Conference- Alt Data Macro Trends 2025

On January 22nd, Paul White, our CEO and Co-founder, took the stage in an unusually chilly Miami to discuss emerging trends in alternative data for 2025. The panel engaged in a lively debate on using data for macroeconomic analysis and the growing role of LLMs and AI within buy-side investment firms. 

The key takeaway? That’s easy: we all need more data. However, a crucial undertone emerged- the trading community requires easier access to trial data and a more streamlined process for acquiring proven datasets. This is both an industry and cultural challenge that delays time to market, negatively impacting both buy-side firms and data vendors. 

Quantbot refers to this challenge as “R.O.D” Return on Data. If it takes six months or more to obtain trial data, we often see a negative impact on its value, reducing the likelihood of purchasing it for long-term use. 

Despite these industry hurdles, Quantbot values events like this as great opportunities to connect with peers, discover new providers, and engage with existing ones. Alternative data means different things to different firms, but our stance remains firm: everyone will need to consume significantly more datasets to stay competitive, whether they are alternative or traditional. 

This growing demand will require firms to ingest, process, cleanse, and map far larger volumes of data. The big question is which companies will handle this challenge without massively increasing bottom-line costs. 

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

Quantbot Sponsors the Inaugural Trading Competition for CMU’s MSCF Women in Quant Finance

Last Saturday, Quantbot was a proud sponsor of MSCF’s 2024 Trading Competition, which was hosted by CMU’s MSCF Women in Quant Finance and Smart Women Securities. The one-day competition at Carnegie Mellon University brought together over 150 talented students from their MSCF program as well as CMU’s undergraduate programs to showcase their quantitative and trading skills. Inspired by the Rotman Trading Competition in Toronto, the event expanded access to market simulation games and offered exclusive networking opportunities with the sponsors, including Quantbot. 

As sponsors, Quantbot researchers and representatives were able to network throughout the day-long competition. We had a chance to meet with students across both Masters and Undergrad programs and observe firsthand the dedication and hard work the MSCF Program Office puts into their students. As always we are very appreciative of the chance to participate in MSCF events, and we look forward to sponsoring again in future! 

Quantbot table of merch is ready for networking

Zihao, Quantbot researcher, introduces Quantbot to the competition participants

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

Quantbot Featured in Carnegie Mellon Article!

On August 19th, Quantbot was featured in an article by Carnegie Mellon University. The spotlight was on our participation in a datathon event that happened in April and its impact on the students. At this event, our employees got the opportunity to collaborate with current CMU students.

The Carnegie Mellon article highlighted our team's dedication and ingenuity throughout the event as well as highlighted our sister company, Codewilling. It was a whirlwind of brainstorming, coding, and strategizing, culminating in a presentation. The experience showcased our commitment to leveraging data for impactful solutions and our collaborative spirit.

Looking ahead, we’re incredibly excited about the prospect of continuing our partnership with Carnegie Mellon and working with their students. Their reputation for excellence and innovation aligns perfectly with our own values, and we’re eager to explore more opportunities in the future.

A huge thank you to Carnegie Mellon for the feature and for the opportunity to collaborate on this event. Quantbot can’t wait for future experiences and successes in the future!

Click the link to view the full article: https://www.cmu.edu/mscf/news/2024/2024-datathon-competition.html

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

Double Dose of Datathons

What’s better than one Datathon? How about two?!

On Friday April 19, Quantbot was thrilled to participate in Schonfeld’s Early Engagement Summit PhD Datathon. Using Code Willing’s dynamic data processing and modeling platform, PhDs from around the country worked in competing groups to find and model alpha signals from pre-determined datasets. This event gave PhD candidates, whose disciplines ranged from Mathematics and Statistics to Economics, the opportunity to test quantitative methods on real financial data, and to encourage their future engagement in the Quant space. 

Ashar welcomes PhD candidates before the Schonfeld Datathon

Quantbot employee, Greg, mentors his team through the Schonfeld Datathon

The winning Schonfeld Datathon team

Since everything comes better in pairs, the very next day Quantbot sponsored a separate Datathon at Carnegie Mellon, also powered by Code Willing’s platform. Participating students came from either CMU’s Computational Finance Master's program (MSCF) or their undergraduate Math program. It was a victory for MSCF since a group of their students took home the top prize, but the 2nd-place undergraduates were equally competitive. After introducing the students to each competition, Ashar Mahoob, Quantbot’s CIO, handed out the prizes on both days to the winning teams. We were thrilled to foster an interest in Quant Finance in all the students, from PhD to undergrad, and we hope they will consider it as a viable career option. We are excited to repeat our success in future!

Quantbot mentor, Rui, celebrates with her winning team at the CMU Datathon

The official victory photo of the CMU Datathon-winning team

Some thoughts from the Quantbot mentors:

Mentoring cwiq-team-central was extremely rewarding.  They are a bright and enthusiastic group of students who worked together quite well and sought my guidance regularly.  I think the most important lessons I hope the team took away are how rich the field of alpha research is in terms of the breadth of both datasets and the machine learning techniques that can be applied, and how powerful Quantbot’s platform is for quickly developing new ideas and evaluating their performance. – Greg Sternberg

It was a rewarding experience mentoring the winning team, cwiq-team-code. They were a group of motivated young professionals who were highly collaborative and eager to learn. I was amazed by the abundance of brilliant ideas they tested in such a short time. The Quantbot platform proved indispensable in handling these computationally heavy and data-intensive tasks. I hope this victory will inspire them to take on even more interesting and critical challenges that impact global markets – Rui Xiong, Datathon winning team mentor

And an afterword from our CIO, Ashar:

Quantbot Hackathon 2024 provided CMU's Masters and Undergrad students a first-hand opportunity to work on a real-life alpha research project, under tight time and budget constraints, using real world datasets. I wish I had had an opportunity to participate in such a project when I was completing the MSCF program at CMU years ago. The students had a fun day of learning and competing. Additionally, all the mentors were very impressed by how well the students coordinated the research process and were able to come up with out-of-sample model performance that was in-line with observed performance in-sample.

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

Enjoying Sake Once Again!

On April 11th, members from Quantbot attended the annual Joy of Sake event at the Metropolitan Pavilion. Members got the opportunity to try traditional and new types of sake along with some amazing food from local NYC restaurants. They all had a great time at the event and can't wait to attend next year.

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

DTL On Ice!

On Thursday, February 29, members of the DTL team enjoyed the last days of skating at the iconic Bryant Park ice skating rink. It was a great night out and we are looking forward to more team outings as spring arrives!

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

Quantbot Hosts a Second NYC Quantum Computing Meetup!

On Monday February 12th, Quantbot had the opportunity to facilitate this month’s NYC Quantum Computing meetup in our office. This month’s presenter, Mani Chandra from nOhm, presented about “Efficient non-Ohmic Charge Transport in Two-dimensional semiconductors.”

Mani Chandra is the CEO of nOhm Devices, a new startup at MIT. He has a PhD in high-energy astrophysics from the University of Illinois. Some of his achievements include being awarded the Astronomy Department’s Chu award for research excellence and the Illinois Distinguished Fellow from the Urbana- Champaign.

Many people showed up to tonight’s talk and were able to collaborate and share their thoughts on the topic.

Here is a synopsis of tonight's presenation: Charge transport in semiconductors is usually diffusive (“Ohmic”) due to electrons scattering off defects and phonons, as described by the textbook Ohm’s law. However, in sufficiently clean two-dimensional materials, Ohm’s law breaks down and gives rise to novel “non-Ohmic” charge transport regimes wherein electrons flow like a fluid. These novel regimes - ballistic and hydrodynamic transport - allow for the creation of highly-efficient electronic devices, with much lower power consumption and heat dissipation compared to current generation electronics (which are based on field-effect transistors). I will present an overview of transport physics in semiconductors and talk about our efforts to use non-Ohmic charge transport to design highly-efficient readout electronics that can be co-located with qubits and various quantum sensors in the innermost cryostage of dilution refrigerators, where the cooling power is limited to ~1 mW. The resulting integrated cryogenic electronics will enable the scaling up of quantum systems, similar to the historical progression from discrete transistors to integrated circuits.

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

Quantbot Lecture Series: “What is Language?” by Ahmar Mahboob

On February 9th, Quantbot had the opportunity to attend to a lecture by Ahmar Mahboob about the nature of language and linguistics.

Prior to the lecture, Ahmar posed questions such as, “Is language a purely human ability or can other life forms learn language too?” and “Is language related to environment and climate change?”. By asking these questions, the main focus of the lecture was uncovered: to understand on a deeper level how language can impact personal and professional lives as well as address societal and environmental concerns.

Ahmar is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Some of Ahmar’s achievements include being a two time recipient of the President of Pakistan’s Award for Highly Qualified Overseas Pakistanis as well as being recognized as the field leader in English language and literature by the Australian Magazine. Additionally, his poetry was inducted into the Australian Poetry Hall of Fame in 2021.

Thank you Ahmar for a great presentation!

BLOG INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS Quantbot Insights Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Finance

Holiday Party 2024!

Tis the season! On December 11, we hosted a holiday gift exchange in the office for the first time in a few years! Quantbot also had our annual holiday party at Slate: complete with good food, drinks, speeches, and even a slide!

We're looking forward to another great year in 2024. Wishing everyone a Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Gift exchange!

We got every member of the US management team + some of our directors to go down the slide at Slate!