Quantitative Strategies

In 2011, OPM broadened its focus within alternative investments to the new investment area, “Quantitative Strategies “. The investment area is based on academic research to develop effective and applicable investment solutions. The area has been under development since 2008 and is now, 2011, made a separate investment area within the organization.

The past 15 years, the academic world has stopped to see the financial markets as efficient and has instead realized that there are many anomalies that can be exploited. Hedge funds were early to take advantage of these effects, but in the traditional “long only” management, development has been slower. The main opportunities have been identified in the very short and the very long time horizons. Within OPM, we have chosen to focus solely on the longer horizons.

A global trend is that systematic approaches are taking market shares from traditional management where index management was the first step. U.S. leads this development where there are now a number of players who successfully makes use of academic research to create effective and predictable investment solutions. The institutional market has also increased its focus on portfolio efficiency, not least driven by increased regulatory requirements, further driving the trend toward more sophisticated approaches where yield, risk and correlation are taken into account. At OPM, we have a unique position since we have been dedicated to this development since 2003 and also have had the advantage to actively engage in dialogue with many of the world’s most successful management organizations, many of which have similar ideas.

The team is led by Peter Seippel who started the development of some parts of the hypotheses and components as early as in 2001. Peter has a background from Nordea and Länsförsäkringar and has conducted research at Stockholm University and Cass Business School in London. Resource wise, there is also an academic advisory board available where, among others, Lars Vinell is included. Within OPM we have individuals with programming background and a proprietary system has been developed for execution and risk management. The infrastructure is well established and has previously been used to manage external mandates.