By Josh Friedlander
AQR Capital Management claims to have one of the most thoughtful and least market-correlated returns in the money management industry. It's not a black box but a finely tuned system with a rarefied academic approach. AQR's blue chip institutional clients would appear to agree, having entrusted the firm with $25 billion in capital - $8 billion in hedge fund assets and the rest in long-only vehicles.
"We are the geeks we claim to be," sighs co-founder Cliff Asness, the firm's managing principal known for his clever commentary and rumpled professorial look.
Coming out of Goldman Sachs, where Asness led the effort to found the firm's Global Alpha hedge fund, he and three partners launched AQR in 1998 as a high-risk, high-return hedge fund along the lines of their alma mater, with which the firm is still compared. But unlike their mostly bullish competition, AQR's strategy, more value-oriented...