Quantitative Primer: Everything you wanted to know about quant...*

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Quantitative Primer: Everything you wanted to know about quant...*

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Quantitative Primer

Everything you wanted to know about quant…*

Strategy

*…but were afraid to ask: unnecessarily complicated 12 June 2026

Quant investors now use ~3x as many factors as they did 25 years ago, and systematic, Quantitative Strategy

AI-driven, and data-intensive strategies continue to gain market share despite flagging United States

returns. Simultaneously, fundamental research capabilities have declined, contributing to

Savita Subramanian

a market mantra: “price predicts price” - flows, positioning and short-term behavior Equity & Quant Strategist

reign supreme. It’s time to pivot, in our view. In our 17th primer, we present macro, BofAS +1 646 855 3878

sector, stock & asset allocation tools spanning decades of performance to discern signal savita.subramanian@bofa.com

from noise, and to gauge what might be “different this time”. See Team Page for List of Analysts

Myth-busting: popular narratives that fail empirical tests Five surprises (see inside for more):

Many widely accepted investment “truths” show little empirical grounding. Buybacks, (1) Risky stocks have traded at a

flows and breadth are cited as reasons to trade but have been fairly limited in predictive premium to safe stocks for more

power. We debunk the notion that “valuation doesn’t matter” but explore where than two decades until very recently.

cheapness signals value traps vs opportunities. One truth that bears out: efficient (2) Higher volatility is here to stay,

companies have outperformed more labor-intensive peers (below). according to the yield curve.

(3) Cyclicals are the new defensives:

Data is like dating: what’s hard to get is more desirable Financials, Tech, even Energy