Fundamentally focused investors may fear a future in which their stock-picking expertise is supplanted by automated trading models. But to David Shaw, founder of D.E. Shaw & Co., this is old news. As an early pioneer in quantitative investing, Shaw blended the worlds of computer science and finance when he founded the firm in 1988, recruiting physicists, mathematicians and other scientists to create and manage proprietary investment models and trading technology. Since then, the firm has morphed into a multistrategy manager that invests in some 14 different strategies. The firm’s evolution has paid off: D.E. Shaw has generated...
