Education
Enhancing Quantitative Investment Education
As an educator, you understand the importance of engaging students and ensuring they grasp complex quantitative investment concepts. However, the traditional lecture format and static worksheets may not always effectively capture student attention or facilitate deep understanding.
With the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, it’s becoming increasingly challenging. Moreover, the limited time available in a semester can make it difficult to adequately cover the breadth and depth of the subject matter.
At Equities Lab, we have developed a powerful platform tailored to address these challenges and revolutionize the way you teach quantitative investment. Our interactive, hands-on learning environment immerses students in real-world scenarios, enabling them to apply and demonstrate their understanding of key concepts. The auto-graded homework feature provides instant feedback, encouraging students to experiment, explore, and solidify their knowledge.
As an instructor
- Efficiently set up and manage your course with ease
- Utilize auto-grading to assess student understanding and provide timely feedback
- Monitor student progress and identify areas where additional support may be needed
- Showcase real-world applications to ignite student interest and drive engagement
- Reclaim your time to provide personalized guidance and mentorship
For your students
- An immersive, hands-on learning experience through an intuitive interface
- Immediate feedback to facilitate efficient progress and self-directed learning
- Access to real market data for exploring, testing strategies, and developing practical skills
- Guided activities designed to reinforce complex concepts and promote deep understanding
- A dynamic, adaptive environment that accommodates individual learning paces
We invite you to join the Equities Lab community and revolutionize your approach to teaching quantitative investment. As a testament to our commitment to education, we offer free Professor accounts, claim yours by emailing university@equitieslab.com from your official university address.
Student access is affordably priced at just $50 for a full semester or $30 for a half semester, payable by either students or departments.
Auto-Graded Interactive Assignments
- Provide instant feedback to students
- Specify Market time frames per assignment
- Customize public and hidden evaluation criteria
- Choose from a library of preconfigured assignments
- Rich analytics and visualizations allow students to understand and master the material
Virtual Stock Market Competitions
Students can…
- Buy and sell virtual stocks using real-time prices
- Place orders for next market open/close
- Utilize an optional web-based client for adding trades
- Add unlimited number of trades
Professors can…
- Restrict the stocks your students can invest in.
(e.g., no penny stocks, no mega-caps, only indexes, etc.) - Utilize rollup tables with metrics for quick and easy grading
- Run multi-portfolio reports for the whole class
- Examine and grade each portfolio individually
- Export grades and metrics into Excel by student id
- View your students’ portfolios as they appeared on any given day in the past, or over any covered time span (up to 25 years in the past)
Built-in Market Anomalies
Some of our most popular anomalies and formulas
Valuation metrics
- Fama-French Factors
- P/E, P/S, P/FCF, Price/Whatever
- EBITA/EV and variants
- PEG ratio
Safety and Fraud detection
- Piotroski F-score
- Altman Z-score
- Beneish M-score
- Ohlson O-score
Technical analysis
- SMA, DMA and EMA
- Ichimoku clouds
- Triangles/Wedges
Over 1,000 searchable built-in strategies
- More than 500 public formulas
- More than 500 public screeners
- Encourage deeper thinking, synthesis, and analysis in your students reports
- Combine valuation and momentum
- Easily modify and adapt even complex formulas like AQR’s Quality Minus Junk
Heat Maps
What’s happening here? During this backtest, the energy stocks sector (bottom right) significantly outperformed the rest, driving the performance of this portfolio.
Scatter Charts
Do yield curves matter? Observe the linear correlation between performance and yield curve steepness: the steeper the curve, the better the performance.
Line Graphs
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This strategy combines momentum, safety scores, valuation and income.
You can view each subcomponent tested alongside the set of stocks that meet all the criteria. Take note of the convenient stats and bar charts that break down performance year by year.
Pie Charts
Identify what is working–and what is not– in your portfolio. This disaster of a screen failed almost everywhere, except for industrials and energy.
Classroom Management
- View all your students by class and semester
- Index all your students using a student ID for easy merging
- Export all data to Excel
- Ample metadata for each homework, including risk taken, criteria passed/failed, performance, and custom metrics
- Utilize portfolio roll-up views for each class, including hand entered grades, performance, risk taken (Alpha, Sharp Ratio, Beta, etc.), and custom metrics for any chosen date range
A sampling of metrics for your homeworks
Outliers
- Best/Worst position
- Best/Worst month
- Maximum drawdown
- Conditional value at risk
Metrics
- Trailing performance
- Annualized performance
- Alpha and beta
- Sharpe ratio
- Average number held
Probabilities
- Positions by percentile
- Months by percentile
- Odds by month of outperformance
- Odds by position of outperformance
Leverage Morningstar Data
Equities Lab utilizes Morningstar, an industry-leading data provider, to deliver deep and comprehensive financial data on American, Canadian, and Australian equities. This enables us to accurately simulate trading strategies, with correct handling of splits and dividends, using both technical and fundamental criteria.
- 20,000+ companies, both alive and dead
- 1,000+ financial data points, from AccountsPayable, AdditionalPaidInCapital and OtherIntangibleAssets through WorkInProgress to fields like UnbilledReceivables and UnearnedIncome
- Data going back to 1995
Leverage Macroeconomic Data
Enhance your analysis by using any data series in the Federal Reserve of St Louis data set (FRED).
- Instant Integration: Simply cut and paste the URL into Equities Lab for immediate use.
- Curated Indicators: Browse our handpicked list of valuable FRED indicators.
- Custom Search: Use our custom search feature to find the specific data series you need.
Additionally, you can also use Quandl data the same way. (Fair warning; most of the good feeds from Quandl now require extra fees.)
Selected Universities
University of Virginia
University of Alabama
Emory University
Georgia State University
University of Florida
University of Tulsa
Virginia Tech
London Business School
University of Central Florida
Find out more
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“I first tried out several other analysis products including eTrade Pro, NinjaTrader and attempting to cobble something together with Google Finance and Google Spreadsheets.The other options were pretty terrible and your product seems almost exactly what I want although, there have been a couple of quirks for me so far: All in all, this is very well done. I haven’t used it much yet, but I already mentioned you to a friend at work who I know is very interested in the market.“
Joshua Bannon
– Software developer
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“While it does at first seem intimidating, after watching the four quick start YouTube videos provided on the welcome page, I was quickly able to get a working understanding of the software and all the insight it had to offer. Overall I’d have to say Equities Lab surprised me with the extensive amount of analytical tools it has to offer paired with the sophistication of very smooth running software. The software is perfect for both those with market experience, as well as students who are“
Ian Unsworth
– Student
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“As a finance student, I have had multiple classes that have used the Equities Lab software for projects, and I have really enjoyed working with it. The back testing and portfolio construction capabilities have been especially useful in developing my understanding of quantitative finance. Additionally, the Equities Lab team has been incredibly helpful and kind whenever I have reached out to them with a question. In particular, I had a project that involved some complex stock screeners and I“
Bradley Hills
– Student
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“This software is very impressive with its ability to test portfolio strategy performance over time. It has enabled me to optimize screening and management strategies while giving me confidence in long term expectation of return and risk. The software comes with a number of featured screens which have eye-popping performance and reliability. There is far more flexibility to the software than I will ever have time to explore, but with little time, I have been able to test ideas and optimize“
Eric Darnel
– Investor
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“I teach a stock investing class, and we’ve used Equities Lab for the last two years. I find the software incredibly powerful, fast, and easy to use. It accesses a wide variety and large number of variables that one can combine in a multitude of ways in order to screen for stocks. What sets it apart from many products is its backtesting capabilities, where one can examine how a particular strategy would have performed over a variety of past market conditions, including bull, bear, and sideways“
Jeffrey Busse
– Professor
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“I had the students in my investments course use Equities Lab and had a good experience. The interface is very intuitive and the program is surprisingly quick at calculating returns from a back test of various investment strategies. The developers seem to be adding additional capabilities all the time and the existing functionality, in terms of the number of variables and the ability to modify those variables is quite impressive. Richard EvansDonald McLean Wilkinson Research ChairBusiness“
Richard Evans
– Professor
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“Chief quantitative investor, Virginia Tech SEED During my time in college, Equities Lab has been an invaluable asset which has enhanced my knowledgeof investing in the financial markets. As a member of Virginia Tech SEED, a student-managed investmentfund managing $5 million, I had the privilege of using Equities Lab to help create, support and implementa value and momentum equities algorithm. This software has played a massive role in the work andresearch I have been able to conduct while“
Jake Vodovoz
– Student fund manager
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“Equities Lab is a wonderful tool for anyone that is interested in investments. Several students of mine have tried this product and found it to be especially useful for implementing popular trading strategies used by hedge funds. I would highly recommend trying it out!“
Vikas Agarwal
– Finance professor
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“It was a breeze to develop and back test strategies. As a finance professor at the University of Florida, both my students and I use Equities Lab to engage in fundamental and technical analysis. Nick has helped with the learning curve and once we were comfortable with the product, it was a breeze to develop and back test strategies to meet investment objectives. I highly recommend the product.“
Sugata Ray
– Finance professor
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“Equities Lab is robust modeling software with data-rich features, including the ability to model quantitative strategies of well-known managers. If you can conceive it, you can back-test and easily create screens using EL. The support is excellent; they are passionate about investing and making this a premier product so there are frequent improvements and additions. I heartily recommend them.“
Alan Wind
– Investor