The Unrules - Man, Machines And The Quest To Master Markets

The UnRules presents the dynamic rules for success in the age of exponential information. Written by Igor Tulchinsky, the trader behind global hedge fund firm WorldQuant, this book is more than just another Big Data guide for financial wonks — it's a prescriptive, inspirational book for everyone navigating the tidal waves of the information age. Data is everywhere, coming at us in a never-ceasing, ever-rising river that threatens to overwhelm us. Tulchinsky shows us, however, how natural patterns underlie that data — patterns that may dictate life or death, success or failure. The marriage of man and machines has allowed scientists to explore increasingly complex worlds, to predict outcomes and eventualities. This book demonstrates how to exercise real intelligence by discerning the patterns that surround us every day and how to leverage this information into success in the workplace and beyond.

Beneath this story is Tulchinsky's description of how advances in mathematics and science have shaped the use of data and automation to pry open complex systems like the financial markets. Tulchinsky describes how he built WorldQuant into a global trading colossus from scratch, amassing millions of 'alphas,' computer algorithms that describe market relationships, and seeking talent from around the world to contribute their own ideas for new alphas.

A key part of The UnRules is Tulchinsky's personal story. As a child, he fled with his parents from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and landed in New York, mastering American life, computer science and quantitative finance on his way to founding WorldQuant. Along the way, he developed a series of personal rules — guidelines to success — anchored by a paradoxical central UnRule: None of these rules is infallible. Life is risk.

• Establish only concrete, quantifiable goals.
• Think big—it's easier.
• Take aggressive risks but manage your losses. If it's scary, run.
• Obstacles are information.
• Ideas are infinite.

For anyone, anywhere trying to make sense of our times, The UnRules offers perspective, context and deeply insightful strategies for navigating the future.

IGOR TULCHINSKY is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of WorldQuant, LLC, a global quantitative investment management firm, which he established in 2007 after more than a decade as a quantitative trader at Millennium Management. During his career, he's been a video game developer, a software programmer at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and a venture capitalist. A strong believer in education, he is the founder of the WorldQuant Foundation, which furthers charitable initiatives, including making high-quality education more accessible worldwide, and of WorldQuant University, a nonprofit that offers the world's largest master's degree program in financial engineering, entirely online and tuition-free. He is also the author of Finding Alphas: A Quantitative Approach to Building Trading Strategies.