A random talk down Quant Street, Ep. 8/11 – What is quant alpha?

Disruption has been the trend of 2025. Upheaval is everywhere, from geopolitics and trade, to the fields of technology, payments, ways of working and more. Does a thematic approach help equity investors to cut through all the noise, or could it be that investment themes or trends are also being disrupted?

What kind of performance can investors expect from Active Quant? In this episode we look at what contributes to the stability of Active Quant, what makes it flexible, and what we really mean when we say ‘systematic alpha capture’.

How much risk are you comfortable with – and how should that affect your investment choices? In the ninth episode of this new series on quant investing, Jeroen Hagens unpacks how different levels of risk appetite influence the use of active quant strategies.

The high-yield bond market has rebounded from April’s tariff-driven sell-off, with US spreads having tightened and European yields holding steady. But investors are being kept on their toes: US policy risks continue to fuel volatility, while divergent dynamics are at play across regions-as-well-as-sectors. Sander Bus and Christiaan Lever discuss the present market environment and the key question: will their quality bias pay off?

Capturing quant alpha requires a blend of innovation and precision. In the eighth episode of this new series on quant investing, we welcome back Vania Sulman, quant portfolio manager, to explain how Robeco captures quant alpha.

In this new episode portfolio manager Vania Sulman explains how the tracking error of an Active Quant approach is managed over the long term, and explains the process of overweights and underweights versus the benchmark. She also talks about how Active Quant differs from an enhanced-indexing approach.

Investing is evolving fast, and next-gen signals are at the forefront of that evolution. But what arethey? In the sixth episode of this new series on quant investing, Iman Honarvar Gheysary returns to unpack these developments for us.

The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s return to the White House have been marked by sweeping change: executive actions, heightened trade tensions, and growing uncertainty seem to be the new normal. In this episode, we evaluate how these early policy moves by the new US administration are reshaping the global economic landscape, and what it all means for investors.

‘In times of turmoil you see where the crowded trades are’, says strategist Martin van Vliet. He explains what happened on the bond market that made Trump blink, and discusses where safe havens can be found when US Treasuries crumble.

AI is everywhere – but what does it actually mean for quant investing? In the fifth episode of this new series on quant investing, we speak with Iman Honarvar, Senior Quant Researcher at Robeco, who shares how AI is used today. From scalable infrastructure to real-world applications, Iman reveals how Robeco has built a foundation to make AI truly work – while embracing the human creativity that still drives innovation forward.