Quantitative funds rebound

When the market hit turbulence, the quant funds lost money. Immediate reaction from clueless perma bears and everyone else was to pile on and claim doom and gloom for quant funds. Now news is percolating down that most of them have rebounded. Obviously you would not see any comment or mention about it from the usual suspects. Go back and see the news and blog coverage from just 10 days ago, there was no shortage of commentators writing obituaries of quants.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Global Equity Opportunities hedge fund rose 12 percent last week after the securities firm shored up the money-losing pool with $3 billion of cash, investors said.

Assets more than doubled to $7.5 billion as New York-based Goldman put $2 billion into the fund and raised $1 billion from investors including Maurice ``Hank'' Greenberg, the former chairman of American International Group Inc., and billionaire Eli Broad. The fund lost about 30 percent in early August as rising mortgage defaults caused stocks to tumble, upending the computer models its managers use to select trades.

Global Equity and other so-called quantitative funds rebounded as market turmoil eased, said the investors, who asked not to be identified because the Goldman fund's performance is private. James Simons's $29 billion Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund made up almost the entire 8.7 percent decline it suffered in the first eight trading days of August, investors said.

Keeping calm during market correction is very important. Most immediate analysis about market corrections is often faulty and no more than just fear mongering by perma bears. See my previous post about this here.