What is a quant fund?
A quant fund invests by computer models rather than by a manager's judgment: statistical patterns in prices and data decide what to buy and sell, and the trades are often automated.
Quant funds test their models on years of past data, then let them run, rarely overriding their signals. Renaissance Technologies, founded by the mathematician Jim Simons, is the best known; Two Sigma and D. E. Shaw are other large ones.
Following them
Their 13Fs list thousands of stocks held for days or weeks, so a quarter-end snapshot says little about what they'll own next. That's one reason HedgeFollow rates funds on the performance of their top holdings and groups funds so you can focus on stock pickers.