Quest is a New York-based quantitative investment advisor managing approximately $2 billion on behalf of some of the world’s leading institutional investors.
Nigol Koulajian founded Quest in 2001 to pursue the development of specialized quantitative investment strategies with a focus on convexity. Quest’s strategies seek to generate attractive absolute returns with significant positive skew while maintaining strong hedging characteristics particularly during tail events that may cause surprise losses in hedge fund and equity portfolios.
At its core, Quest believes that most market participants use basic statistics like standard deviation of returns as their primary measure for volatility and market risk. Furthermore, they tend to overutilize this measure as a proxy for risk budgeting and position sizing, which may create substantial distortions in markets. By measuring other components of risk which are not accounted for in volatility, Quest has been able to take advantage of these volatility mispricings, while generating positive returns and maintaining a long-volatility profile.
Quest’s flagship strategy trades over 90 of the most liquid futures and FX markets. Timeframes for investments range from a few hours up to a few months. The average holding period is about 8 days, therefore it tends to react more swiftly than other longer-term investment strategies, especially as market conditions are changing.
Today, Nigol continues to lead the firm with the mentality of mindfulness meets mathematics, an approach which balances mathematical modeling with a deep awareness of market realities and behavioral biases. This philosophy permeates all aspects of Quest’s business.
In this video, Nigol and Brian Brugman, Director of Research, speak to:
- Why most investors are blind to the market risk they are taking
- The effect of behavioral biases and how Quest uses crowding in markets to its advantage
- Quest's ~30 different measures of volatility and how they help identify the true risks in markets
- How two decades of meditation have provided Nigol with a clear edge in navigating markets
- Why some of the world's leading institutional investors allocate to Quest
Disclaimer: Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. Commodity trading involves substantial risk of loss and may not be suitable for everyone. This is not a solicitation.
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Quest is a New York-based quantitative investment advisor managing approximately $2 billion on behalf of some of the world’s leading institutional investors.
Nigol Koulajian founded Quest in 2001 to pursue the development of specialized quantitative investment strategies with a focus on convexity. Quest’s strategies seek to generate attractive absolute returns with significant positive skew while maintaining strong hedging characteristics particularly during tail events that may cause surprise losses in hedge fund and equity portfolios....more
