Fund Radar: Can quant funds beat human-driven funds?

Technology is advancing rapidly, and now it's even making investment decisions. Enter quant funds. No emotions. No gut feelings. Instead, they use algorithms to pick stocks based on factors like valuation, momentum and earnings growth. Basically, quant funds eliminate human biases. Humans - typically data scientists and analysts - design these algo-models, and each fund comes with its own set of predefined rules. Once built, the models operate autonomously. They adjust based on real-time data and sometimes use machine learning to adapt as market conditions change. The current landscape Presently, there are 12 quant funds in India, most of them relatively new. Only three funds - Nippon India, DSP and Tata quant funds - have a history of over five years. Together, these 12 funds manage assets worth over Rs 11,000 crore, with just two of them (SBI Quant and quant Quantamental) accounting for 51.7 per cent of that amount. Most quant funds invest in large- and mid-cap stocks from th