Investors' Alphabet: Q is for Quant

  • Story by: Stephen Wilmot
  • Magazine: InvestmentAdviser
  • Published Monday , August 18, 2008

Scrabble players will doubtless recognise quant as the long pole used by students to propel a punt through the leafy gardens of Oxford and Cambridge.

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Financial punters, on the other hand, are more likely to extrapolate quantitative. The abbreviation quant may draw a few raised eyebrows from the scrabble-playing contingent, but the financial meaning is much more widespread than its naval sister.

Quant investors input historic company and market data into models, which then rank stocks from most to least attractive. They have two major advantages over qualitative approaches (which cannot, incidentally, be referred to as ‘qual’).

To read the rest of this Investors' Alphabet blog - and have your say - click here.

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