Investing Lessons From the Top of a $7.3 Billion Quant Fund
Igor Tulchinsky fled the Soviet Union at 10 with nothing. Here he talks about “bad quants,” 100 million alphas and what to do when markets get scary.
Igor Tulchinsky laid the groundwork for WorldQuant LLC, a $7.3 billion quantitative hedge fund with more than 700 employees, while working for Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management LLC. The 52-year-old native of Belarus now provides a rare look at how he built WorldQuant in his book, The UnRules: Man, Machines and the Quest to Master Markets (Wiley, Sept. 24, 2018). Here Tulchinsky discusses his unconventional upbringing, his debt to Karl Popper, and his decision to turn WorldQuant into a “factory” that employs 140 Ph.D.s in more than 25 offices in 15 countries in the firm’s quest for 100 million alphas, or insights.
You fled the Soviet Union at age 10 with your parents and lived in a cockroach-infested hotel in Manhattan. You worked odd jobs, such as washing dishes in Wichita. How did your youth shape you?