UoB’s “Business Administration” Holds A Lecture on Quantitative Trading Strategies

Sakhir – University of Bahrain (Khadija Abdulsalam)
15 May 2022
The Department of Economics and Finance at the College of Business Administration at the University of Bahrain (UoB) held a lecture on quantitative trading strategies on Tuesday (10 May 2022), which was attended by more than 80 male and female students from bachelor’s and master’s programs.
The lecture entitled “Quantitative Trading Strategies: How to Take Advantage of Bull or Bear Markets” was presented by Dr. Hamad Al-Sayed, founder and CEO of Tawazun, which is a digital investment platform.
Dr. Al-Sayed identified quantitative strategies as methodologies that are based on advanced mathematical and statistical models, to generate trading signals across different financial instruments, and that the term bull or bear markets is used to express the current trend of the market, which has a direct impact on investments. He added that a bull market is one in which asset prices rise over time, while a bear market represents a market in which investment prices fall over time.
Also, Dr. Al-Sayed compared some of the traditional directional investing methodologies to the more sophisticated and market-neutral modern methodologies – which have come to be known as “pure alpha” trading strategies.
Furthermore, he touched on the role of the portfolio manager, who is responsible for making investment decisions and managing the investment portfolio, and the retailer, who sells goods and services directly to consumers through multiple sales channels to make a profit.
In addition, he introduced the concepts of quantitative trading strategy building and arbitrage, the law of one price, and the idea behind quantitative investing (hedge fund), and explained basic and mathematical investment philosophies, regarding value investing, quantitative strategies, and technical analysis.
The lecture was moderated by the Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance, Dr. Yumna Ahmed Abdullah, and the students got an opportunity to gain insight into some of the tools required to develop their own quantitative trading models. Also, the speaker answered their questions about short selling, or empty selling, and the role that behavioral finance plays in quantitative strategies, and the idea behind quantitative trading.
It is worth noting that Dr. Hamad Al-Sayed has published three papers – in ABS Level III and journals and they were peer-reviewed – on arbitrage and high-frequency trading. He has also written the Q-score system, a new quantitative approach to assessing the viability of equity pairs, and serves as part lecturer at Bahrain Institute of Banking & Finance (BIBF).

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