两年前，中国量化行业曾因管理失误和监管打压而陷入低谷，交易所对高频交易和杠杆产品加强了监管。宁波灵均投资是一个典型的逆转案例：2024年初因集中抛售触发交易所处罚后，该公司加强了风控参数和即时监控，并增加了短期信号模型。经过整改，灵均去年以平均超过70%的回报率领跑顶级量化基金排名。头部量化机构凭借在人工智慧、人才和数据方面的先发优势，构建了中小型机构难以逾越的「技术护城河」，资金加速向头部集中。
量化基金的崛起也迫使传统主观选股机构加速转型。上海少数派资产管理公司花了五年时间从纯主观选股转型为依赖AI智能体，其创办人称「曾经保护我们的护城河已变成围墙监狱，进化不是选择，而是生死攸关」。对于在中国境内运营的30多家外资机构而言，缺乏量化策略便难以募资。然而随著量化基金规模扩大、机器与机器之间的竞争加剧，超额收益空间正在收窄——指数增强策略的平均超额回报已从前一年缩减过半至4%，量化管理人获取超额收益的门槛将不可避免地提高。
Quant funds in China have surged in popularity, with Ubiquant raising 2.6 billion yuan in under two hours for a new fund in May, and investors snapping up over 100 million yuan of another product within seconds. Quant assets under management have more than doubled in less than a year to over 2.6 trillion yuan, driven by the industry's rapid adoption of artificial intelligence. Last year, long-only stock quants outperformed discretionary rivals by over 20 percentage points, prompting a massive shift of investor capital away from traditional stock pickers toward quantitative strategies.
The quant sector's resurgence marks a dramatic reversal from two years ago, when regulatory crackdowns on high-frequency trading and leveraged products had cast a shadow over the industry. Ningbo Lingjun exemplifies this turnaround: after incurring exchange penalties for concentrated sell orders in early 2024, the firm overhauled its risk controls and added short-horizon signals, ultimately leading the top quant rankings with average returns exceeding 70% last year. Top-tier quants have leveraged first-mover advantages in AI, talent, and data to build technological moats that smaller firms struggle to cross, causing capital inflows to concentrate heavily among leading players.
The dominance of quants is also forcing traditional discretionary managers to adapt or face obsolescence. Shanghai Minority Asset Management spent five years transitioning from pure stock-picking to AI-driven investing, with its founder declaring that evolution is a matter of life and death. For foreign asset managers operating onshore in China, raising money without a quant strategy has become extremely difficult. However, as machines increasingly compete against machines and quant funds scale up, generating alpha is becoming harder — the average excess return from index-enhanced strategies has shrunk by more than half to 4%, signaling that the threshold for outperformance will continue to rise as China's capital markets mature.