These computer-driven investors couldn’t care less about a company’s “fundamentals,” amorphous qualities such as the morale of its employees or the cut of its chief executive’s jib. That was for the dinosaurs of Wall Street, the Warren Buffetts and Peter Lynches of the world, investors who focused on factors such as what a company actually made and whether it made it well. Quants were agnostic on such matters, devoting themselves instead to predicting whether a company’s stock would move up or down based on a dizzying array of numerical variables such as how cheap it was relative to the rest
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