The domestic head quantitative fund Phantom Quantitative "breeding" DeepSeek, let the outside world attention to the development of quantitative fund industry, as well as the industry in the specific practice scenarios of the positive contribution to the development of artificial intelligence.Let's walk into Beyond Quantitative, located in Nanjing Jingkai District, to learn about the development of quantitative funds.
"Gifted kids" hiding in office buildings.
Ordinary front desk setup, crackling keyboards in the cubicle, half-drunk coffee on the lounge table ...... This is the daily life of Jiangsu's head quantitative fund, Pei Yang Quantitative.
Like many entrepreneurial enterprises, since its official establishment in 2020, Beyond Quantitative has been "hiding" in an office building in Nanjing's Jingkai District, developing "quietly". Before DeepSeek became a big hit, except for the domestic quantitative investment colleagues, almost no one has paid attention to this small company.
Quantitative investment refers to the in-depth analysis and forecasting of a large amount of market data with the help of mathematical models and computer programs through the use of advanced technological tools and big data analytical capabilities in order to find investment opportunities that can bring about excess returns.
Unlike traditional quantitative institutions, Feng Ji, the founder of BeiYang quantitative does not like to call his company as a financial trading institution, he prefers to define the company as a "pure AI scientists to form a quantitative research institute".
Here, the density of talent is particularly high. "The entire company employs less than 50 people, more than 20 of them are technicians, the age group in the 95-00, are from the top institutions at home and abroad in the Department of Mathematics, Department of Computer Science, resume is can be benchmarked against the R & D department of the big manufacturers of the talented young people." Feng Ji said.
Walking in the office area of PeiYeung quantitative, you can clearly feel the busy flow out of the unique sense of order of a team of science and technology background. Feng Ji even a little proudly said: "quantitative fund is to do secondary market trading, but the company does not have a financial professional staff."
The essence of quantitative trading is data and modeling.Feng Ji attended Shandong University Taishan Academy (Everest Talent Training Program) as an undergraduate, and then went straight to Nanjing University's School of Computer Science under the tutelage of Prof. Zhou Zhihua.In 2018, while still in his second year of Ph.D., he was recruited to join IW as the Executive Director of IW's Nanjing AI Research Institute, exploring the landing scenarios of AI. In the process, Feng Ji found that quantitative funds are the most natural application scenario for AI, because quantitative investment needs to analyze a large amount of, high-quality data and make decisions, and these are the things that AI is best at doing.
"Geniuses and geniuses work together with a clear goal of getting technology. In Nanjing, our talent density even exceeds that of many well-known tech companies." Feng Ji said.
Continuous investment in R&D is essential for "massive computing power".
"Gifted kids" get together and stay up late to upgrade a system or cheer on a successful operation.
Under the support of their "strongest brain", BioVision Quantitative needs to process 25T of financial data every day, and the huge arithmetic demand leads to an hourly power consumption of more than 200 degrees in the office area, and the system must be upgraded once every two weeks. A small square in the computer room, each one is very expensive. Feng Ji said, although expensive, but must continue to invest, this is the adventure is also the heart of everyone.
In 2022, BioVision launched its first capital management product and raised 500 million RMB in the same month; since 2023, BioVision's management scale has been steadily increasing, and the current capital management scale has reached nearly 5 billion RMB.
Because of the better cash flow realized from quantitative investment, PeiYang Quantitative also started to continuously invest in R&D to build stronger computing power regardless of the loss.As of today, the company has two arithmetic centers with a target arithmetic of 158 PFLOPS.
"At present, this level of office area of about 1500 square meters, plans to take down the upstairs of the first floor of the office space, continue to recruit high-end talents in the field of mathematics and computers, and strive to do our best to expand the arithmetic and make better results." Feng Ji said he hoped that the company in the process of continuous development and growth, can use higher international standards of technology companies require themselves.
"To be the first ten billion quantitative Jiangsu"
Public information shows that quantitative funds originated in the United States in the 1970s. At that time, the proposal of asset pricing model and the progress of computer technology laid the foundation for quantitative investment, and a group of pioneers used mathematical models and computer programs to guide investment decisions.
In fact, the emergence and development of quantitative funds has been accompanied by the development of computer technology and gradually flourished. It is worth mentioning that, as far as the domestic market is concerned, last year, the passive index fund surpassed the active equity fund in terms of scale and performance, basically announcing the formal arrival of the "index investment era" relying on AI.
"From the development of foreign quantitative funds, for the secondary market itself, quantitative funds effectively enhance market effectiveness and liquidity; for the community as a whole, quantitative funds 'trained' technology, can really feed the technical community, to achieve the combination of theory and practice. This situation in the history of human science and technology has been a typical case, called technology spillover. For example, the civil use of technology in the Apollo program, the birth of microwave ovens and so on." Feng Ji said.
As one of the most efficient scenarios for the current application of artificial intelligence, the quantitative fund industry does show many advantages, such as the ability to provide high salaries to bring together top-notch talents, and to refine and apply relevant technologies to other fields in a more timely manner.
Feng Ji hopes that the company can "do Jiangsu's first ten billion quantitative".And the scale of 10 billion dollars means that Beyond Quantitative has more strength to do new exploration on artificial intelligence. He also confessed that the development of quantitative investment needs policy and social tolerance, and top talents at home and abroad. For the former, with reference to the development of foreign quantitative funds, this industry can grow out of many internationally renowned investment institutions and investors; for the latter, it is hoped that the policy will encourage more top professionals to understand Jiangsu and take root in Jiangsu through this small window of quantitative funds.
"The development of AI will definitely bring more possibilities. But only on the basis of continuous accumulation of arithmetic power and talents will the results of innovative breakthroughs appear. Our science and technology to goodness in the beginning does not change, times漾 quantitative is also planning to extract the common technology developed in their own work and other fields, set up a specialized technology company to feed the community." Feng Ji said.
