Finding Alphas: A Quantitative Approach to Building Trading Strategies

by Igor Tulchinsky

Design more successful trading systems with this practical guideto identifying alphas Finding Alphas seeks to teach you how to do one thing anddo it well: design alphas. Written by experienced practitionersfrom WorldQuant, including its founder and CEO Igor Tulchinsky, this book provides detailed insight into the alchemic art ofgenerating trading signals, and gives you access to the tools youneed to practice and explore. Equally applicable across regions, this practical guide provides you with methods for uncovering thehidden signals in your data. A collection of essays providesdiverse viewpoints to show the similarities, as well as uniqueapproaches, to alpha design, covering a wide variety of topics, ranging from abstract theory to concrete technical aspects. You'lllearn the dos and don'ts of information research, fundamentalanalysis, statistical arbitrage, alpha diversity, and more, andthen delve into more advanced areas and more complex designs. Thecompanion website, www.worldquantchallenge.com, features alpha examples with formulas and explanations. Further, this book also provides practical guidance for using WorldQuant'sonline simulation tool WebSim(R) to get hands-on practice inalpha design.

Alpha is an algorithm which trades financial securities. Thisbook shows you the ins and outs of alpha design, with key insightfrom experienced practitioners.


Learn the seven habits of highly effective quants
Understand the key technical aspects of alpha design
Use WebSim(R) to experiment and create more successfulalphas
Finding Alphas is the detailed, informative guide youneed to start designing robust, successful alphas.

Genres: Finance

272 pages, Hardcover

First published August 28, 2015

Reviews

[Max Bolingbroke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two books in one.

The first is a shallow overview of some potential alphas that doesn’t go much beyond a few sentences of description and motivation for each. You could get a better understanding of this topic by just spending half a day on SSRN.

The second book is a tutorial and FAQ for their WebSim backtesting platform. This seems to be squarely aimed at potential users such as university students, and was mostly interesting for me to the extent that it revealed how unsophisticated WebSim is.

[Juan Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Working for worldquant, the company of the author of this book revolutionaze the way I saw the stock market. This book has good material for algorithmic trading. The downside is that you have to connect the dots and most of the book must be implemented in their platform.

[Anthony Fiedler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt like an interesting split for people familiar with investing but not familiar with alpha generation. Papers and a tease into how structured and foundational alpha generation has to be when you start thinking of scale. Valuable for those getting into the mix.

[Kevin Peng · Rating 5 out of 5]

good broad collection of quant subjects

Not too deep and understandable. Written by portfolio manager who don't B's. They give me insight even though not alpha they are using.

[Vasile-Simion Sularea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overall intro into how you could approach this issue. The latter half of the book is just a manual for a proprietary tool

[Diniar]

I want to start reading this book

[Hongliang Ma · Rating 4 out of 5]

good introductory book for alpha researchers