Paris, December 19, 2019 - Participants had until 1st of December, midnight, to submit their quantitatively rebalanced weekly portfolios of Lyxor ETFs to outperform the Stoxx 600 index on the Alphien platform. Many raised up to the challenge with as much as 235 submissions (single asset strategies and portfolios) and a total of 134 teams.
The submitted data science algorithms have now been frozen and are subject to a strict “paper replication” phase ensuring replicability of their original strategies in real market conditions until 28 February 2020. An experienced jury in the field will independently select the winners.
The jury will be composed as follows:
- Sandrine Ungari, Head of Cross Asset Quantitative Research at Société Générale and Lecturer at Paris VII Diderot (Master “M2MO”, Random Modelling).
- Christophe Bernard, Researcher in Quantitative Market Making at Société Générale.
- Bernadette Busquere, Global Head of Equity Strategies at Lyxor.
- Lionel Semonin, CEO at Alphien.
- Benjamin Bruder, Head of Quantitative Research at Lyxor and Lecturer at Paris VII Diderot (Master “M2MO”, Random Modelling).
The winners will get full recognition and receive their prizes at the Alphathon award ceremony that will be held in March 2020.
Walid Madiou and Marc Lucchini, students in Msc. Banking, Finance & Insurance at Université d’Orléans, comment: “Participating in Alphien’s competition has been a very enriching experience. We could put in practice our financial markets’ knowledge and code a portfolio selection algorithm. Alphien team has been remarkably available, always ready to answer our questions.”
Gregory Bessau, software & system engineer for an asset manager, comments: “The Alphathon experience has been very instructive; on the one hand, it allowed me to set up a portfolio to outperform a benchmark, which I had never done before; on the other hand, confronting other participants with a more IT Quant / Finance profile was very challenging and allowed me to gauge my performance. The handling of the platform proved relatively simple and I was able to quickly industrialize the modeling and backtests of my strategies. Alphien’s support team has been extremely responsive and always answered my questions clearly.”
About Alphien:
Alphien is a fintech based in Paris and Singapore. The start-up connects the financial industry to the world of academic research through its interactive platform. First, it provides researchers with the technology and data required to develop quantitative investment strategies. Secondly, investment managers can use Alphien as a genuine research and innovation laboratory. This enables them to access a vast pool of talent and expertise, in particular in the field of data science. In June 2019, Alphien was certified by the Finance Innovation cluster for its “Alphathon” project.
Access the Alphathon Public Leaderboard here.
For further information, please contact:
- François Lemoine, Head of Business Development - Europe - Tel: +33 (0) 6 21 20 54 20
- Philippe Damay, Head of Business Development - Asia - Tel: +65 9661 7036