This book provides straightforward quantitative strategies that any investor can implement with little work using simple, free or low-cost tools and services.
But what exactly is quantitative investing?
There are various possible definitions of quantitative investing, but the author defines it as:
"Identifying reasonable and measurable hypotheses about behaviours of the financial market so as to make investment decisions with an acceptable confidence in expected returns and risks."
The main advantages in using quantitative models are that they:
- make the investment process independent of opinions and emotions (the most important factor for an individual investor), and
- make it reproducible by anyone at any time (the most important factor for a fund)
With a set of good strategies, quantitative investing allows one to act in the market at specific pre-planned times. It is possible to work on this just once a week or month, and ignore charts and the news. It removes most of the doubts and emotions with the discipline of keeping a long-term vision and sensible money management. This book will show you how. FRED PIARD gained extensive experience in the software industry, information systems consulting and marketing before discovering an interest in the financial markets. Self-taught in this field, he puts into practice what he learnt from his previous activities to build his own methodology. From his years in research he has the ability to combine a systemic point of view and an analytic approach. As a software architect he knows that the things that work the best in the long term are the simplest. As a consultant he experienced the real economy through various sectors: energy, banking, healthcare, manufacturing and public administration. And he learned from marketing that human group behavior can sometimes be modeled, but never predicted. He has a PhD in computer science, an MSc in software engineering and an MSc in civil engineering.
