Blog: Why I'm no longer a "Quant."

Hi. I'm Ed. I used to be a quant.

A recent article in Bloomberg quoted David Einhorn, a prominent hedge fund manager, as saying that the markets were "fundamentally broken" because of "passive investors and quants." To quote Bloomberg, "Einhorn said that quants base their trades on short-term price moves rather than a company’s actual worth." I've considered myself a quant for 46 years. None of the quants I know have been concerned with short-term price moves. For instance, Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Merton Miller, Robert Merton and Myron Scholes won Nobel prizes for being quants. Yet none of them were concerned with short-term price moves. I guess they're not considered quants by Mr. Einhorn.

Since I'm not concerned with shot-term price moves, I guess I'm also no longer a quant. And not being able to call myself a quant has led me to wonder how we got to this place. Words change meaning over time. Awful used to mean "worthy of awe" rather than bad, for instance. Quant seems to have morphed in a similar way.