Over the course of the past year, QuantConnect welcomed significant growth. Our Quant Community grew by 45% in 2020 alone, and we opened our Alpha Streams marketplace to everyone. This, along with our recently launched Organizations layer, has allowed us to continue to address new users as well as helping current ones scale and grow alongside us.

QuantConnect, as it is today, was born out of a small community of quantitative traders that wanted a platform to live trade their algorithmic trading strategies. But as we’ve grown, we continue to be guided by the ideal we started with: empowering quants. I’d like to highlight a small selection of the innovations our team has completed over the past year that we believe live out this ideal.

First, there were numerous engineering innovations from our team that helped make our users’ journey in quantitative finance more rewarding. Shipping applications such as Skylight and cloud optimization allow quants to work more efficiently, effectively, and ideally lead to better outcomes in their search for alpha. Consistent updates to LEAN ensure it remains the standard-bearer for open-source algorithmic trading engines. The deployment of new data sources such as L1 equity quote data lets our community leverage spread and quote information for more realistic backtesting. And in one of their fastest turnarounds, our team shipped a migration tool for Quantopian users to port their projects into the QuantConnect universe, after many were left in the lurch by the platform’s closing. 

We are also proud of the educational tools we have provided our quants. A Udemy course was made available to help new users; our Strategy Library was continually updated with tutorials and information on popular trading strategies; Boot Camps were shipped; and Idea Streams videos were created to inspire hypothesis testing and walk through strategy development. But it’s not just our team educating users — our Quant Community has always been collaborative and consultative as they aid each other’s efforts. Community tutoring and an awards system were two ways in which we supported this atmosphere of mutual cooperation in 2020.

As we execute on our vision for 2021, we will continue educating and innovating in order to break open quant finance for all, regardless of socio-economic background. We believe a diversity of trading strategies and participants is required to create robust markets that can withstand unforeseen shocks. 

We hope you continue to join us in this endeavor to democratize quant finance.

Happy coding,

Jared Broad