#quantinvesting

Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management is riding high in 2025, with several of its hedge fund strategies delivering double-digit gains and outpacing the broader market — even amid global uncertainty.

AQR’s Apex strategy, which blends stock picking with macro and arbitrage trades, surged 11.4% in the first half of 2025. The fund, managing $4.3 billion in assets, more than doubled the S&P 500’s 5.3% return over the same period, according to a source familiar with the firm’s performance.

Meanwhile, AQR’s Delphi long-short equity fund, with $4.1 billion in assets under management, delivered an 11.6% net return through June 2025. The gains come during a period of intense market volatility, sparked by escalating global trade tensions and conflicts in the Middle East. Despite a nearly 20% dip in April, the S&P 500 has bounced back sharply, hitting record highs in recent days.

Another standout performer is AQR’s Helix strategy, an alternative trend-following fund that is up 7.4% year-to-date.

Founded in 1998 by Cliff Asness — a former Goldman Sachs executive and a pioneer in quantitative investing — AQR has grown into one of the world’s largest quant-driven hedge funds. Rooted in the academic principles of value and momentum developed at the University of Chicago, AQR has successfully broadened its offerings with multi-strategy approaches.

The firm now manages $142 billion in assets, a substantial jump from $99 billion at the start of 2024 — reflecting growing investor confidence in its diversified and resilient investment models.

Image: The cause of the GameStop trading frenzy remains largely unclassified as it appears to us that quant and high-frequency trading played a much bigger role in the market disruption than what is being reported. By Brian Nelson, CFA

We think the SEC staff put out a fantastic “GameStop Report” with some excellent information. However, the report did not get to the crux of the matter, failing to disclose what actually caused the extreme market volatility in meme stocks, while glossing over the substantial increase in institutional accounts, likely belonging to quant/trend/momentum funds, that contributed to the trading frenzy this year. We think investors and market participants deserve to know more about what caused this threat to market integrity and structure as the continued proliferation of which may only grow larger and larger in the coming decades. If it was quant trading, then we encourage the SEC to take steps to ensure that such trading is curbed effectively as it is clear that such price-agnostic activity is not contributing to market efficiency.

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