Quants – pick your alt data wisely, says Goldman MD

Investors must balance risk of false signals versus missing out on alpha, says Matthew Rothman

The ratio between the width and height of a hedge fund manager’s face has shown to be linked to their performance. But would you pick managers based on it? Probably not.

That was a question posed by Matthew Rothman, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, a quant tasked with selling Goldman Sachs’ internal data.

Speaking on a panel at the Quandl data conference in New York on January 23, Rothman talked about the dilemma facing quants in finance as they weed through the deluge of alternative data