Overview: D. E. Shaw’s 2Q14 positions
Must-know: D. E. Shaw's 2Q14 positions (Part 1 of 6)
D. E. Shaw overview D. E. Shaw is a New York-based $30-billion-plus quantitative hedge fund founded in 1988 by David E. Shaw, a former Columbia faculty member. The value of the fund’s U.S. equity portfolio was slightly up from ~$70 billion in the first quarter of 2014 (or 1Q14) to ~$73 billion in 2Q14.
The fund added new positions in Navient Corp (NAVI), Applied Materials (AMAT), and Ally Financial (ALLY). It upped its position in Apple (AAPL), Time Warner Cable (TWC), Citigroup (C), and eBay (EBAY). Notable positions sold were CBS Corporation Class B (CBS), AvalonBay Communities (AVB), and Alliance Data Systems (ADS).
According to D. E. Shaw’s website, the firm’s investment activities fall under two broad areas—alternative investments and benchmark-relative strategies. The firm focuses on the pursuit of attractive risk-adjusted returns for its investors. In the alternative investment strategies, the firm emphasizes uncovering hard-to-find sources of return with modest long-term correlation to traditional asset classes. It looks for unique opportunities that are less exposed to competitive pressures and market crises. In benchmark-relative strategies, the firm seeks to use quantitative techniques to generate returns that exceed standard benchmarks and to offer diversification from conventional style factors like value, growth, size, or momentum.
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