IMO algo trading can find edge with respect to technicals, but not with so much with fundamentals. I'd be surprised if a successful algo can be built using just fundamentals. I personally don't see much value in the factset data because it's stale and only captured on a qtrly or yrly basis... even the valuation multiples i believe aren't calculated using current price. I could be proven wrong, but imho focusing on fundamental data is a distraction.

Take a look at pre-2016 FCF yield as a factor, that was pretty successful. Based on my experience, technicals could just as easily be replaced with a coin flip. In order to find alpha you need to do something smart, something different that people won't have thought of before in an attempt to carve out your niche. Blindly following a technical indicator (or a combination of indicators) won't do much, nor will blindly following any factor (including fundamental) that millions of people are aware of.

You're going to struggle to find a technical or fundamental factor that will give you an edge once slippage and commission is factored in, ignore the distractions and carve out your niche.

Hi Jay Ross

I respect your opinion, however there are hedge funds who do use fundamental data and are succesful ( see 2sigma and AQR for example)
You should their blog posts. Regarding the fact that the valuation multiples are not calculated using current price, it's easy to calculate it yourself (They often perform better using current price).

2sigma: https://www.twosigma.com/insights/type/research/
AQR: https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Perspectives

Hi Pieter, it was my understanding that 2sigma, and AQR primarily have been building algos around technical analysis, but I can be wrong and things may have changed, but those blog posts do seem more oriented towards TA. Also take a look at job postings for those firms, they're not looking for CFAs. I've worked at HFs which employ very successful algos and they were all focused on technicals. The bulk of any Quants success in general, I am willing to bet has come from trading on technicals. Humans have more edge in fundamental investing because they can source more information and form opinions based on a variety of non-public information.

@Quant Trader - ill take a look at FCF yield, thanks

As far as I've been able to surmise, AQR is primarily based around factor investing (momentum, size, value etc) not technicals and Two Sigma does most things, but their more popular fund is futures arbitrage I think?

Re: AQR, Cliff wrote his thesis on momentum investing... which is technical analysis.

While nobody today runs mutual funds by seeking stocks that exhibit candlestick or head-and-shoulder patterns, technical analysis by another name remains alive and well. Today, it is called momentum investing. To be sure, momentum investing is a dressed-up version of technical analysis, replete with academic support and the attempt to explain why the strategy is a "risk factor," but it is nonetheless technical analysis: a signal based solely on a security's price behavior. The idea, of course, is nothing new. Back in the day, the approach was called either price momentum or relative strength--the latter being such a popular term that in the 1980s, newcomer Investors Business Daily trumpeted its relative-strength data as being a prime advantage over incumbent The Wall Street Journal. Whatever its name, favoring stocks that had led the way over the previous several months--and avoiding those that had lagged--was popular long before the academics offered proof. Which, surprisingly, they did. Ironically, among the early proponents of momentum was a student of Gene Fama's, Cliff Asness (founder of AQR), who documented the strategy's success in his 1995 doctoral thesis.

Source: https://www.morningstar.in/posts/24459/taboo-talk-technical-analysis.aspx

Trust me, both are using more Technicals than Fundamentals. I should be clear though, over longer time horizons technical analysis becomes less successful and is most optimal for intraday strategies. The opposite is true of Fundamental strategies.

Oh right, if we're including factors such as mean reversion and momentum in the 'technicals sphere' I rescind my previous statement that 'technicals could just as easily be replaced with a coin flip'. I naively assumed you were talking about chart patterns.

I'd say it depends on the time horizon. "The market in the short term is a voting machine, in the long term its a weighing machine". To the effect that fundamentals matter, they certainly matter more in the long run because they directly indicate a company's ability to both weather storms and to drive growth through asset monetization efficiently.

But from what I've seen so far on all the strategies pertaining to fundamentals on Quantopian, in the short term, they are on par with chance (like in the the Machine Learning Tutorial). This is also why Graham and Buffett never engaged in short-term trading, they knew that their skill sets gave them an advantage for picking the best weights for the weighing machine rather than votes in the voting machine.

In shorter term horizons, from what I can see, technical indicators and and pricing action (such as bid/ask spreads, volume, momentum, support/resistance levels, etc.) are more robust indicators.

Short term horizons buy and sell the sizzle, long term horizons buy and sell the steak.

@Jay Ross - Just look at ARQ publications. It is quite evident that they use fundamental data extensively. It's hard to manage large sums of assets using just technical signals.