the hedge fund journal - Exploiting fundamental, behavioural and cognitive biases
by Hamlin Lovell, Profile | Issue 134
Algert Global CEO and CIO, Dr Peter Algert, founded the firm in 2002, and counts himself very lucky to have been close to the genesis of quantitative equity investing namely the University of California, Berkeley and BARRA, where he studied and worked in the 1980s. “We can honestly claim that this is where quant equity started. Berkeley Professor, Barr Rosenberg, started the eponymous BARRA (Barr Rosenberg Associates); John Andrew McQuown, the M in KMV, launched first the index fund at Wells Fargo in the 1970s, which became Barclays Global Investors (BGI) and later joining Dimensional Fund Advisors; Richard Grinold moved from academia to become global head of research at BGI and Peter Muller, who had studied at Princeton, set up PDT (Process Driven Trading) after a spell at MSCI BARRA. Many staff at Algert are connected to that pool of DNA,” says Algert.