Intro

Welcome to QUANTPICKER documentation

QUANTPICKER is a user-friendly backtesting application.

It allows you to backtest Stock-Picking and global tactical asset allocation (GTAA) models.

We have cumulative 15+ year experience in asset management. What we discovered during this time is that simple things are usually the most robust and beautiful.

As an example, one could set (and combine) multiple criteria to select stocks (think Piotroski score, Graham, etc.). However, we found that it is best to keep things simple.

Using single (or 2 criteria at most) to select stocks brings comparable (and more robust) results. So why should we use 10 selection criteria, if we can use 1 or 2 to obtain similar results?

The website brings such simplicity not only in stock selection, but in risk-management as well. We are aware (in the end, some of us are portfolio managers with PhDs) that there are multiple techniques to optimize your portfolio (think Markovitz, Kelly criterion, Black-Litterman model).

We have implemented them ourselves during our careers. And became disapointed. These models are sensitive to the input parameters and are just not effective in risk-managing your portfolio. Compare this with risk-parity portfolio construction, which is intuitively very simple (each stock is allocated percentage inversely proportional to its volatility.)

What about technical analysis? Maybe it works, if enough people think it works. Based on our experience, it is enough that you learn how simple moving average works. That is enough. We need a simple and objective technique to tell us, when to exit the position (think 2001, 2008) during bear markets. No matter what selection criteria you use, correlations of stocks become 1 when the market falls. No portfolio optimization will help you, but simple trend filter applied to each position.

Now, if we combine these 3 ingredients (stock selection, risk-parity, trend filter), we have a clear logic of the main menu in BACKTEST section.