Coatue — the long-running hedge fund of billionaire Philippe Laffont that manages $25.8 billion in assets — has lost one of its top people in charge of buying the data many consider to be the lifeblood of equity-focused hedge funds.
Dave Schwartz, a vice president focused on data acquisition and strategy, is no longer at the firm, sources tell Business Insider. It is not clear if Schwartz was dismissed by Laffont or if he left on his own accord. Coatue declined to comment, while Schwartz did not immediately return requests for comment.
Schwartz's role, which nearly all funds Coatue's size now have, is to vet and bring in alternative data streams that will help portfolio managers and analysts project market moves before more traditional numbers, like earnings and jobs reports, are released. The multi-billion alternative data space has been even more important during the ongoing pandemic, as investors are scouring data feeds for a sign of life returning to normal.
Prior to joining Coatue in late 2018, Schwartz spent nearly three years in a similar role at Ken Griffin's Citadel, according to his LinkedIn, and also worked at ITG.
Coatue's data science team, led by Alex Izydorcyzk, is well-regarded in the industry, with more than two dozen people on it. But it ran into some speed bumps this year when the team's young quant fund was unable to keep up with the market volatility caused by the coronavirus in the spring.
The roughly $350 million quant fund relied on its data-driven algorithm to make its investment calls, and the pandemic skewed many of the feeds it relied on. For instance, e-commerce data, which spiked in the spring when physical store locations closed, only showed part of the story of the pandemic reality — sending signals to buy stock in struggling retailers whose physical stores were shut to customers.
The fund, which lost money in the fourth quarter of last year, pulled back significantly from the market in the months after the pandemic hit, and then in June Coatue closed it altogether to investors and returned its outside capital.
Have a tip or know more about Coatue's quant efforts? Reach the authors directly at bsaacks@businessinsider.com or amorrell@businessinsider.com. To message them via encrypted chat, visit their author pages.
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