Quanta Student Capital

Student-led quantitative research into financial markets.

Student-led quantitative research into portfolio construction, risk and financial markets.

We are a student-run research group that applies mathematics, statistics and programming to questions in investing. Each month we publish an independent, transparent piece of analysis — showing our data, our methodology and our code — on topics ranging from diversification and correlation to systematic strategy design.

View Latest Research About Us
02
Reports Published
Monthly
Publication Cadence
10
Asset Classes Covered

Focus Areas

What We Research

Three recurring themes run through our published work.

Portfolio Construction

How weighting, allocation and rebalancing decisions shape the risk and return profile of a portfolio — from mean-variance foundations to practical construction rules.

Risk & Diversification

What correlation, covariance and volatility actually tell us about diversification benefits — and why more holdings does not automatically mean less risk.

Systematic Strategies

Rules-based approaches to investing — momentum, factor exposure and regime-dependent behaviour — tested with reproducible, data-driven methods.

Latest Research

Our newest publication

Risk / Performance Measurement Research #02 Published September 2026

How Much Can a Risk Metric Lie?

Measuring the manipulability of ten standard risk and performance statistics.

We test ten widely used risk and performance statistics — including Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar, VaR, expected shortfall and maximum drawdown — against five manipulation attacks: return smoothing, path reordering, reporting-period selection, tail-risk selling and option-based payoff reshaping. A single comparable measure, the manipulation ratio, shows how far each metric can be pushed, while a manipulation-proof control ensures no attack delivers any genuine economic improvement. The report ranks the metrics from most to least exploitable and tests real ETF returns for hidden smoothing.

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Our Process

How a report gets published

Every piece of research follows the same transparent process, from an open question to a public write-up.

1

Question

We start with a precise, testable question in quantitative finance.

2

Data

We source market data for the relevant assets and time period.

3

Quantitative Analysis

We build the statistical and mathematical models needed to answer it.

4

Findings

We interpret the results honestly, including their limitations.

5

Publication

We publish the full write-up, methodology and figures openly.