Factor Academy

A masterclass on
factors For the fundamental investor

Equip yourself with the knowledge & toolkits you need to navigate the new world of factor-risk models and factor-driven markets.

Enroll in Factor Academy 
20+ hours of self-paced
core content
30+ hours of supplemental 
guest speaker sessions
Guided hands-on
Factor Labs
Fully self-paced with 
12 months of access

program structure

Factor frameworks move markets and drive institutional capital flows. However, developing an exhaustive understanding of factor frameworks can be a challenging process for the fundamental investor with a non-quantitative background.

Factor Academy is designed to help non-quant investors develop frameworks for making strategic decisions around three key aspects of factors:

Factor-based
investing

Understand how factors influence changes in stock price

  • What is a factor?

  • Major equity style factors

  • Factors for the non-quant

  • Common factor-investing approaches

Factor risk
Management

Identify factor exposures that may impact stock performance

  • How factor risk models work

  • Separating idiosyncratic and systematic risk

  • Predicting your book’s volatility

  • Calculating return attribution

managing a factor-aware portfolio

Construct a portfolio around factor loadings and themes

  • Factor-constrained portfolios

  • Hedging unwanted exposure

  • Crowding and positioning

  • Expressing themes without introducing unintended bets

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Download the syllabus

The majority of daily stock price movement is due to factors
learn about the missing layer in portfolio construction

instructors

Analyst Academy is designed and delivered by a team of instructors with decades of experience on the buyside. You'll be learning from instructors that were PMs and analysts at multi-managers, single managers, and long-only firms.

Brett Caughran

FOUNDER AND HEAD INSTRUCTOR

Brett brings 13 years of hedge fund experience at Maverick, D.E. Shaw, Citadel, Two Sigma & Schonfeld.

Brett founded Fundamental Edge in 2022 to help improve training on the buyside. Brett has led over 750 buyside analysts through Analyst Academy and has designed and delivered numerous custom analyst training programs.

Rich Falk-Wallace

QUANT INSTRUCTOR

Rich brings 8 years on the buyside at Silver Point, Viking Global & Citadel as a Portfolio Manager.

Rich is currently Co-Founder & CEO of Arcana, an equity-factor risk model focused on risk & performance. Arcana enables institutional investors to understand portfolio risk, decompose single-stock and book performance, and isolate idiosyncratic differentiation.

Rocky Cahan

QUANT INSTRUCTOR

Rocky is a Portfolio Strategist at Empirical Research Partners, focusing on research from stock selection to macroeconomic analysis since 2013.

Previously, he led Deutsche Bank's top-ranked U.S. Quantitative Strategy team and held roles at Macquarie Bank and Citigroup, with published work in prominent finance journals.

how it works

1: Enroll and Start Learning

As soon as you enroll, you get immediate access to the entire library of prerecorded core content: 20+ hours covering factor-based investing, factor risk management, and factor-aware portfolio management, taught by practitioners who have managed capital at some of the largest funds in the world.

2: Apply and Go Deeper

On demand access to 30+ hours of guest speaker sessions that bring in voices from across the market, including risk-model builders, quant strategists, and multi-manager veterans. Guided Factor Labs then give you hands-on reps applying the frameworks to real portfolios.

3: Stay Connected

Once you sign up, you get a full 12 months of access to all the content. This means whether you want to finish the course in 12 days or 12 months, you can work at your own pace and still go back to reference the material for a full year.

Enroll now

Guest speakers

  • A man with glasses, dark hair, and a goatee wearing a dark suit and patterned tie, smiling indoors.

    Giuseppe Paleologo

    Head of Quant Research at Balyasny, former Risk Management, Millennium, Citadel, Hudson River

  • A smiling man with dark curly hair and glasses wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and patterned blue tie, standing against a blurred background.

    ADAM PARKER

    Founder - Trivariate research, Former Eminence & Morgan Stanley

  • A smiling man in a suit and tie standing in front of a window with a cityscape view.

    Mark Carver

    Global Head of Equity Factors & Equity Portfolio Management, MSCI

  • A professional man with dark hair in a suit, smiling in an office setting.

    Sandeep Varma

    Co-founder & CEO - Equity Data Science, Former Bridger & Herring Creek

  • A man with short brown hair wearing a light blue button-up shirt, smiling slightly, with a bright background.

    Wes Sapp

    Research Analyst, Empirical Research Partners

  • A smiling woman with gray hair, glasses, and earrings, wearing a blue blazer and a blue patterned scarf, standing in front of bookshelves.

    Melissa brown

    Global Head of Investment Decision Research, SimCorp (Axioma)

  • Headshot of a middle-aged man with short gray hair, blue eyes, wearing a blue and white striped dress shirt, smiling against a gray background.

    Chad Myrhe

    Managing Director, Alfred L. Dupont Charitable Trust

  • Black and white photo of a smiling man with short hair, wearing a collared shirt.

    Omer Cedar

    Co-Founder & CEO, Omega Point Former Two Sigma

  • A man with light brown hair and a beard wearing a light-colored blazer and shirt, smiling against a blue background.

    Meb Faber

    Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Cambria Investment Management

  • A smiling man with a bald head wearing a white collared shirt against a gray background.

    WES GRAY

    CEO, Alpha Architect

  • A man with a beard and short hair wearing a white dress shirt in an office setting.

    Jared kubin

    Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Issachar Technologies

  • Close-up of a smiling man with short hair outdoors, with a grassy field and trees in the background.

    Marc Greenberg

    Founder, Greener Pastures

  • A middle-aged man with gray hair and a beard smiling, dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, and a patterned tie, against a black background.

    Rob Arnott

    Founder and Chairman, Research Affiliates

  • A grayscale close-up portrait of a man with short dark hair and light skin, wearing a suit and tie, looking directly at the camera.

    Mahmood Noorani

    CEO, Quant Insight

Testimonials

Hear from students that completed Analyst Academy.

program content

  • Module Outline:

    1. What is a Factor? And Why Should I Care?

    2. The Building Blocks of Factor Analysis

    3. Factor Attribution & Return Decomposition

    4. Factor-Based Investing

    5. Factor-Based Risk Models

    6. Fundamental Investing in a Factor-Focused World

    Instructors:

    • Brett Caughran

    • Rich Falk-Wallace

    Guest Speakers:

    • Chad Myhre, the Allocator Perspective

    • Mark Carver, MSCI

    • Melissa Brown, Axioma

    Factor Lab:

    • Case Study: Consider Optimal
      Factor Hedge

  • Module Outline:

    1. Frameworks for Factor-Based Investing

    2. Identifying Alpha with Factor Frameworks

    3. A Deep Dive Into Common Factors

    4. Applied Factor Investing

    5. Frameworks for Factor Timing

    6. "Quantamental" Factor Investing Approaches

    Instructors:

    • Brett Caughran

    • Rocky Cahan

    Guest Speakers:

    • Meb Faber, Factor-Based Investing

    • Wes Grey, Factor-Based Investing

    • Adam Parker, Trivariate

    Factor Lab:

    • Case Study: Construct
      "Quantamental" Portfolio

  • Module Outline:

    1. "Alpha Machine" & the Rise of Factor Risk Models

    2. Statistics & Math for the Non-Quant

    3. How Factor Models Work

    4. Risk Decomposition & Volatility Prediction

    5. Performance Attribution

    6. Expanding Factor Libraries

    Instructors:

    • Brett Caughran

    • Rich Falk-Wallace

    Guest Speakers:

    • Giuseppe Paleologo, Risk 201

    • Sandeep Varma, Managing a Portfolio with a Factor Risk Model

    Factor Lab:

    • Case Study: Optimize Idio on a
      Native Portfolio

  • Module Outline:

    1. PM Toolkit for Factor-Constrained Investing

    2. Factors, Positioning & Crowding

    3. Themes, Baskets & Factor-Constrained Investing

    4. Factor-Aware Hedging Approaches

    5. Lessons Learned (the Hard Way)

    6. Portfolio Management in a Factor-Focused World

    Instructors:

    • Brett Caughran

    • Rich Falk-Wallace

    Guest Speakers:

    • Jared Kubin

    • Omer Cedar

    Factor Lab:

    • Case Study: Express Theme,
      Factor-Constrained

wHO IS THIS COURSE FOR?

Investors at
Multi-managers

Investors operating in a beta-neutral, factor-constrained risk mode

Investors at
Single Managers

Investors who operate in a factor-aware
environment

Portfolio
Managers

PMs who are managing capital in a factor-constrained risk model

Allocators

Allocators who are seeking to better understand factor vs. idio in the evaluation process

Investors at
Long Onlys

Investors who are evaluated with a factor-attribution framework

Junior Buyside
Analysts

Juniors seeking to broadly understand the language and frameworks of factor attribution and risk

What you’ll walk away with

Speak the language of factors

Build the baseline factor fluency that factor-constrained and factor-aware seats now expect, so you can hold your own in "factor vs. idio" conversations.

Decompose your returns

Break your P&L into its factor and idiosyncratic components, so you can see how much of your performance came from idio alpha versus the exposures you were carrying.

Identify unintended bets

Identify unknown exposures, understand your book's volatility, and know where your systematic risk is coming from.

Manage your systematic risk

Understand where your book's factor risk comes from and how to hedge the exposures you don't want.

Construct a factor-aware portfolio

Manage your book at the portfolio level: analyze positioning and crowding, weigh factor timing, and structure hedges so your aggregate exposures reflect the bets you actually want.

Learn the quant toolkit

Get plain-English grounding in the statistics, models, and quant tools fundamental investors are increasingly measured against, built for a non-quantitative background.

Without factor awareness...

You don't know where your returns are coming from

You don't know how quants operate or how they make decisions

You don't understand why some good ideas get flagged by the factor risk model

You don't understand how individual stocks interact within a portfolio

You take factor bets you never intended to make

You don't know when a factor is a headwind or a tailwind

With Factor Academy...

You can separate idio alpha from factor exposure

You know how all players at the table operate

You can see how risk models may flag a stock due to factor exposure

You understand how your positions combine into your book's factor exposures

You can identify when a stock has exposure to a certain factor

You can weigh factor timing and market regime in your decisions

Enroll Now

FAQs

  • You do not need a model subscription. However, we do offer free data vendor trials for institutional investors only. We will provide contact information to these vendors upon enrollment.

  • Yes, once enrolled, you will get immediate access to the content.

  • This course is now a rolling enrollment, meaning you can enroll at any time without waiting until the cohort starts.

  • Yes. Many of our students are firm-sponsored. Your firm may have a training budget for exactly this type of expense. Factor Academy also accepts soft dollars. Email info@fundamentedge.com for details.

Ready to navigate a factor-driven market with confidence and fluency?

Equip yourself with the frameworks fundamental investors need to navigate factor-risk models and factor-driven markets.

enroll today