Quantopian Has $100M in Algorithmic Investing Trading Volume in May, Opens Platform to All Investors

BOSTON, June 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Quantopian, the world's first browser-based algorithmic investing platform, today announced the launch of the open beta of their platform.  Algorithmic investing, long restricted to hedge funds and investment banks, is now available to any interested investor.  In the closed pilot program, customers embraced the platform enthusiastically.  In May, Quantopian had more than $100 million in trades directed by algorithms running on the platform.  About 150 customers ran an algorithm that traded real money. Today the platform has more than $5 million in assets directed algorithmically (ADA).

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With the start of the open beta period, anyone can use the secret weapon used by Wall Street to incorporate volumes of data, test strategies, conquer emotional biases, and beat the market. Quantopian provides end-to-end support for algorithmic investing, including algorithm writing, backtesting with a database of 12 years of historical data, forward testing with live data, paper trading, and integration with customer brokerage accounts to execute trades in the market. Quantopian is also a destination for 20,000 quantitative investors (quants) who have joined the online community to share ideas and code, and help each other become better quants.

Early Quantopian user and quant trader Troy Shu is loving the platform: "I've been trading my brokerage account with Quantopian since January and I have been really impressed with the platform. Coding up my strategy was straight-forward and letting Quantopian handle the day to day running of the algorithm has been seamless -- I just check in on my performance when I have time, and otherwise I don't even have to think about it."

Quantopian CEO John Fawcett is looking forward to a larger scale: "I'm thrilled by the performance of our algorithmic investors and our platform in private pilot. I'm confident we are ready to delight investors from around the world in beta."

The pilot program let Quantopian add several new features they need to succeed. Most notably, it is now possible to direct trades to IEX, the exchange of Flash Boys fame.  Other new live trading features include real time collaboration, trading guards, additional order types, and dynamic universe selection.   During the pilot, Quantopian's community tested and deployed hundreds of algorithms into the live market, logging a total of more than 2,000 live algorithm trading-days.

Looking to future features of the platform, Quantopian is working on expanding the offering to include more tools that quants want, including fundamental company data and additional brokerage connections.  Also, Quantopian has identified simple low frequency, low cost strategies that are perfect for beginners with limited trading capital who want to get started with algorithmic investing, before they learn to write a single line of code. Quantopian is exploring other no-code options for interested investors.

About Quantopian

Quantopian is a browser-based algorithmic investing platform that brings algorithmic trading to the broad investing community. The platform combines the flexibility to instantly integrate any data with the simplicity to get started developing in minutes. Quantopian makes the full potential of quantitative trading available to investors.  Quantopian protects the intellectual property of their customers, which remains the customers' property.  Quantopian gives investors access to the tools, capabilities and community they need to create and optimize their own trading algorithms in an open and transparent environment, and then put those algorithms to work in the live market. Quantopian is also an engaged community where people can discuss concepts, processes and performance and learn from peers and experts. The result is a better way to understand – and profit from – quantitative trading. Quantopian is headquartered in Boston. Learn more at www.quantopian.com, or visit us at the Quantopian blog, or follow us on Twitter @quantopian.

Four keys to Quantopian's success:

• Community: Quantopian is built around a community of more than 20,000 members. These quants teach, advise, and help each other every day.
• Python: Algorithms in Quantopian are written in Python. The Python language is ubiquitous in the tech and academic world today, and is not a proprietary, niche language only used for trading.
• Open-Source Backtester: Our backtester is an open source project called Zipline which provides unheard of transparency in the finance world, and harnesses the combined efforts of dozens of project contributors.
• End-to-End Platform: Quantopian provides, for free, 12 years of US stock data, a backtester, a forward tester, paper-trading, and a supportive community. That combination is unmatched anywhere.

SOURCE Quantopian