Chris Hammond

Founded in 2001, Quantitative Services Group LLC (QSG) is a research firm located in Naperville, Illinois. The firm is a subsidiary of Markit Group Holdings Ltd. They seek to leverage the latest technology, construction techniques and specialty data to provide institutional investors a variety of global stock selection models focused on outperformance. QSG's Value Momentum Model provides a balanced approach to stock selection within the U.S. market. This model favors stocks with strong earnings quality, good valuation, strong balance sheets, positive momentum, and good earnings growth. The Value Momentum Model's approach is best for investors seeking broad exposure to a variety of proven stock selection methods and a core approach portfolio construction. The model is applied across all market-caps, investment styles and asset classes. The firm's Relative Value Model includes themes of price multiples, profitability, earnings expectations, intrinsic value and financial strength. This model is designed to avoid value traps, augment sector-relative and industry-relative viewpoints and provide a consistent source of value. QSG's Price Momentum Model provides a powerful, consistent 1- to 3-month investment signal. This model leverages put and call options and trading volume information to reduce the inherent risk-seeking nature of momentum-based strategies. The firm's GARP Model identifies growth stocks with strong value characteristics. The model consists of a proprietary combination of long-term earnings growth and relative value signals. It employs first-order partial correlation to create a blend of sustainable earnings growth and current cheapness. This model is best for strategies targeting stocks that demonstrate high long-term growth potential and the sustainability to realize that potential. QSG's Deep Value Model is a proven approach to selecting undervalued stocks across the broad US market. The Deep Value Model is designed to select future out performers over the next 9 to 12 months. The firm's Deep Value Model uses free-cash-flow, dividend yield and asset turnover to identify stocks that are currently trading at a deep discount to their intrinsic value. The Deep Value model provides discriminatory power for both long-only and long-short strategies and compliments more short term-oriented momentum and growth strategies. QSG's Earnings Momentum Model uses a proprietary search algorithm to combine analyst forecasts with the company's past earnings strength, along with several indicators of future earnings potential. The Earnings Momentum model has consistently outperformed in both pre- and post- Regulation FD environments. Utilizing a unique k-clustering factor selection technique, QSG's Historical Growth Model selects stocks with an above-average track-record of earnings growth, strong sales growth and high sustainable growth. This blended approach enables the model to identify traditional growth stocks, as well as value stocks on the verge of growth.