The Unrules Man, Machines and the Quest to Master Markets

Learn from a master of quantitative finance the rules that made him a success.

The UnRules presents the dynamic rules for success in the age of exponential information. Written by Igor Tulchinsky, the trader behind global quantitative investment management firm WorldQuant, this book is more than just another Big Data guide for financial wonks — it’s a prescriptive, inspirational book for everyone navigating the tidal waves of the information age. Data is everywhere, coming at us in a never-ceasing, ever-rising river that threatens to overwhelm us. Tulchinsky shows us, however, how natural patterns underlie that data — patterns that may dictate life or death, success or failure. The marriage of man and machines has allowed scientists to explore increasingly complex worlds, to predict outcomes and eventualities. This book demonstrates how to exercise real intelligence by discerning the patterns that surround us every day and how to leverage this information into success in the workplace and beyond.

Igor Tulchinsky has spent his career discerning meaningful patterns in information. For decades, Tulchinsky has been at the forefront of developing predictive trading algorithms known as alphas — a quest that has led Tulchinsky to explore the nature of markets, the fundamentals of risk and reward, and the science behind complex nonlinear systems.

Tulchinsky explains what we know of these systems, both natural and man-made, in accessible and personal terms, and he shares how alphas have driven his success as an investor and shaped his central “UnRule,” which is that no rule applies in every case. As markets evolve, even the most effective trading algorithms weaken over time. Decades of creating successful alphas — and learning how to effectively transform them into strategies — have taught Tulchinsky about the need to combine flexibility and focus, discipline and creativity when building complex models. At a time when data and computing power are exploding exponentially, The UnRules provides an expert introduction to our increasingly quantitative world.

IGOR TULCHINSKY is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of WorldQuant, LLC, a global quantitative investment management firm, which he established in 2007 after more than a decade as a quantitative trader at Millennium Management. During his career, he's been a video game developer, a software programmer at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and a venture capitalist. A strong believer in education, he is the founder of the WorldQuant Foundation, which furthers charitable initiatives, including making high-quality education more accessible worldwide, and of WorldQuant University, a nonprofit that offers the world's largest master's degree program in financial engineering, entirely online and tuition-free. He is also the author of Finding Alphas: A Quantitative Approach to Building Trading Strategies.

Foreword vii

Preface xi

CHAPTER 1 Quake 1

CHAPTER 2 The UnRule that Rules the Rest 11

CHAPTER 3 Parallel Universes 21

CHAPTER 4 Signal and Noise 33

CHAPTER 5 Waves 49

CHAPTER 6 Correlation 63

CHAPTER 7 Scaling Up 79

CHAPTER 8 An Exponential World 95

CHAPTER 9 Quant Biology 109

CHAPTER 10 The Age of Prediction 125

Index 137

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