Struggling stock pickers eye quants, big data

LONDON: Active fund managers, reeling from years of underperformance, are increasingly reaching for quantitative tools to gain an edge as competition from cheap passive products and looming MiFID II regulations lead them to rethink their businesses.

“It’s not about the magic sauce anymore,” said Rob McCreery, founder of Libra Investment Services, a London-based provider of quant research for active managers for 14 years. Stock pickers “are becoming much more open-minded toward anything that can help with timing and screening good ideas.”