Cliff Asness

Cliff Asness earned his PhD under Eugene Fama at the University of Chicago, where he co-authored foundational research on value and momentum factors that would shape the next two decades of quantitative investing. Before completing his doctorate he led Goldman Sachs's Quantitative Research Group, managing an internal hedge fund of roughly $8 billion. In 1998 he left Goldman to co-found AQR Capital Management alongside John Liew and Robert Krail. AQR pioneered the systematic application of factor premiums — value, momentum, carry, and quality — across global equity, fixed-income, commodity, and currency markets. The firm's "Alternative Risk Premia" framework became an industry standard for institutional asset allocation. At its peak AQR managed more than $226 billion in assets, ranking it among the ten largest hedge funds globally. Asness is one of the most prolific academics in practical finance, having authored dozens of widely-cited papers in the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Journal of Finance. He received the Graham and Dodd Award multiple times and is widely credited with bridging the gap between academic asset pricing theory and real-world quantitative portfolio management. His public commentary on factor timing, value investing, and market efficiency has made him one of the most influential voices in institutional investment debate.