New Geneva equity hedge fund prepares for coming bear markets Stouff Capital's Urizen fund, launched in September 2018, follows a quantamental strategy, that is, one that combines both a fundamental approach with a quantitative one. The fund is run by Julien Stouff, who has 25 years of experience in trading and asset management, together with a technology officer and a risk officer. The quantamental strategy makes perfect sense nowadays, he says. Much more than pure quant. And it will be perfect for the times to come.

The problem with quant Quoting Stanley Druckenmiller (Duquesne Capital) who once said quant funds, who manage $1tln of assets, had muted his signals, and Philippe Jabre, who closed his Jabre Capital hedge fund in 2018 and said that new technologies were making the market more difficult to anticipate, Stouff continues: "our fund is a quantitative fund and we understand perfectly the world of quantitative funds. However, we do not believe in quant. Indeed, the human factor is very important to understand the present and the future. Quant is only good to understand the past.

Furthermore, all quant funds have the same model and crowd the market. Now they are all losing money. So adding a fundamental factor will help create returns." Facts and consensus Stouff boasts a contrarian view; he will defy consensus if facts do not support it, he says. And to compare both, the team members use their own matrix which determines contrarian sentiments and inflection points. The algorithms, for example, showed a bearish signal in January, he adds. Ray Dalio (Bridgewater) thinks the current period looks like the 1930s, he says. It can be seen through the likes of Brexit and Donald Trump, where people voted for events and leaders that are changing the rules of the game. It is impossible that all these changes do not have an impact on the markets. But we cannot see it right now because there is a lot of liquidity going around. Stouff believes tha......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.