Key Takeaways
- • Jason Teed's Quantified STF fund generated a 75.98% return in 2020, outperforming 99% of category peers according to Morningstar data, with the $106.9 million fund holding a Morningstar gold rating.
- • The fund employs a purely quantitative, trend-following strategy that eliminates human emotion and investment committee influence by automatically responding to price trends in the Nasdaq 100 index rather than attempting to predict market movements.
- • Teed's investment philosophy combines quantitative rigor with humanities training (philosophy undergraduate degree, master's in finance, and CFA designation), demonstrating that successful portfolio management blends mathematical modeling with conceptual thinking.
- • The trend-following approach prioritizes market responsiveness over prediction, allowing the strategy to adjust positions based on actual price signals rather than forecasting timing of future events—a distinction Teed emphasizes as critical to avoiding prediction errors.
- • Co-portfolio managers Jerry Wagner and Timothy Hanna share responsibility for the fund's 2020 outperformance, indicating a collaborative quantitative framework rather than single-manager dependency.
Summary
Jason Teed's Quantified STF fund delivered exceptional 2020 performance in a year marked by pandemic-induced volatility and unprecedented market dislocations. The $106.9 million fund generated a 75.98% return, positioning it in the 99th percentile of its category peers and earning a Morningstar gold rating—a distinction that places it among the year's most successful actively managed strategies.
The fund's outperformance stems from a fully quantitative, trend-following methodology that Teed describes as fundamentally responsive rather than predictive. Unlike discretionary approaches subject to behavioral bias or committee-driven decision-making, the Quantified STF fund operates on algorithmic signals derived from price trends in the Nasdaq 100 index. This structure removes human emotion entirely from portfolio construction and rebalancing decisions. As Teed explains, while investors may correctly anticipate directional moves, timing such moves with precision remains exceptionally difficult—a problem his strategy sidesteps by allowing market price action to dictate position adjustments in real time.
Teed brings a distinctive intellectual foundation to quantitative management. His undergraduate background in philosophy, combined with advanced training in finance and a CFA designation, reflects a conviction that rigorous investing requires both mathematical sophistication and conceptual clarity. He emphasizes that successful portfolio management involves "figuring things out" across complex domains—a problem-solving orientation that translates directly to navigating markets during periods of structural uncertainty such as 2020.
Portfolio management responsibility is shared with co-managers Jerry Wagner and Timothy Hanna, suggesting the fund's approach is embedded in a systematic framework rather than dependent on individual decision-making. This distributed structure further insulates the strategy from single-point-of-failure risks inherent in concentrated management models.
The fund's 2020 performance occurs within a broader context where active management underperformance has become the norm, with historical data indicating that approximately 91% of large-cap equity fund managers underperform relevant benchmarks. The Quantified STF fund's positioning in the top percentile therefore represents a notable exception to this persistent pattern and reflects the potential for disciplined, emotion-free quantitative strategies to capture alpha in volatile market environments.
The fund's outperformance stems from a fully quantitative, trend-following methodology that Teed describes as fundamentally responsive rather than predictive. Unlike discretionary approaches subject to behavioral bias or committee-driven decision-making, the Quantified STF fund operates on algorithmic signals derived from price trends in the Nasdaq 100 index. This structure removes human emotion entirely from portfolio construction and rebalancing decisions. As Teed explains, while investors may correctly anticipate directional moves, timing such moves with precision remains exceptionally difficult—a problem his strategy sidesteps by allowing market price action to dictate position adjustments in real time.
Teed brings a distinctive intellectual foundation to quantitative management. His undergraduate background in philosophy, combined with advanced training in finance and a CFA designation, reflects a conviction that rigorous investing requires both mathematical sophistication and conceptual clarity. He emphasizes that successful portfolio management involves "figuring things out" across complex domains—a problem-solving orientation that translates directly to navigating markets during periods of structural uncertainty such as 2020.
Portfolio management responsibility is shared with co-managers Jerry Wagner and Timothy Hanna, suggesting the fund's approach is embedded in a systematic framework rather than dependent on individual decision-making. This distributed structure further insulates the strategy from single-point-of-failure risks inherent in concentrated management models.
The fund's 2020 performance occurs within a broader context where active management underperformance has become the norm, with historical data indicating that approximately 91% of large-cap equity fund managers underperform relevant benchmarks. The Quantified STF fund's positioning in the top percentile therefore represents a notable exception to this persistent pattern and reflects the potential for disciplined, emotion-free quantitative strategies to capture alpha in volatile market environments.
Go deeper than the headline
Research every firm in this story, track the ones that matter and get the daily briefing — free for 7 days.