Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

Post-August 2007, everyone seems to be saying that the age of quants and quant-based hedge funds are over and other such dire doomsday predictions. Even the bigwigs lost a good bit of money and people are probably more than a little wary of quant-based hedge funds at the moment.

But here is the question — was it really quantitative trading that did them in or was it the fact that they were leveraged beyond redemption?

Sure, part of the quantitative strategy involved some rather convoluted leveraging, but I think that the important thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the ones that failed were ones that were heavily-leveraged. Similarly, there were a lot of quant-based hedge funds that were not as heavily leveraged that did rather well.

While it may take a while for the landscape to clear out and settle, it is worth considering that quant-based hedge funds may not necessarily be a bad thing. But leveraging, as we’ve seen, can even bring down the greats.

Thoughts?

Yesterday, Lana and I were at the one of the local pet-shelters here (Purrfect Friends) and saw a couple of kitties that we liked.

Finally, we settled for a beige/white guy who was the most chilled out and playful of the lot and another almost-but-not-quite black guy (with a white spot on his tail).

The beige guy ended up liking me a lot, so I now call him Poona-kutty (which roughly translates to baby-kitten in tamil) Schrodinger. And the black guy is a little younger and is a little shy but just as playful. Lana calls him Taj (inspired from the Van Wilder - Rise of Taj).

So, here are a couple of pictures!