No quant team? Good news from a man who worked at Citadel and ran risk at Millennium and HRT.

Giuseppe Paleologo is "absolutely convinced" you can run risk and portfolio construction 80 to 85% as well as a quant team. With Excel and a few well motivated rules. Even with 20 stocks.

More screens, more indicators, more tabs. It feels like control over your capital. You'd expect a quant to push even more models, more data, more machine learning. He pushes the opposite. The philosophy of his new book, The Elements of Quantitative Investing: "it's important to think about simple things deeply."

Here are 7 rules worth stealing from his talk with Corey Hoffstein on Flirting with Models. 🐬

1. Risk management is decision making

"Risk management is a misnomer," he says. It "should be called rational decision making about investment."

Risk isn't the voice in the room that says no. It's how you decide where your money goes.

2. A good risk manager also says "do more"

"It's not only saying no, it's also saying do more of this." When the evidence backs a strategy, he has argued for deploying more risk, not less.

Money left on the table is a risk decision too.

3. Solve performance first, then scale

"First in life you solve a performance problem, and then you solve a scaling problem."

Lots of people make money at small size with a high Sharpe ratio. Making billions with a decent one is "infinitely harder." 🐯

If you run a company, same rule: prove the sale works before you hire five people to repeat it.

4. Linear first

"If something doesn't pan out in a generalized linear model, it's very unlikely that it will work out in a super complex nonlinear model."

Before you trust a new indicator, check it with a simple comparison on your own trades. And a new signal only counts for what it adds beyond the ones you already use. Many add nothing.

He likes old tools for a reason: methods that have lasted 100 years will likely stay valid for the next 100.

5. Don't build portfolios from lists

Long the top 50, short the bottom 50, equal size. Popular, and wrong. It throws away data, hides factor bets like momentum and value, and treats Nvidia and IBM as if they carried the same risk.

The quiet cost: one position that's secretly oversized can undo a year of careful picks. Size each position by its own risk.

6. Watch the crowd

Crowding, everyone holding the same ideas and forced to sell at the same time, is one of "the two major sources of risk for hedge funds."

His reasons: fewer, bigger firms. Passive near 40% of assets. Managers moving from one platform to the next, who all "talk to each other." He calls it "a game of musical chairs." When the music stops, everyone runs for the same few chairs.

When consensus is in the air, check where the exit is.

7. Simple beats long

"Fundamental managers should not be discouraged," he says. A few simple rules about diversification and factor exposures go a long way.

He holds himself to it. His one regret about his first book? 200 pages that could have been 100. Short and sweet wins.

Bonus: take risks to manage risk 🌴

The risk chief rides motorcycles. "That's my luxury," he says. His answer to the irony: "it's important to take risks in order to manage risks." Step outside your comfort zone on purpose, so you know what risk feels like before your capital is on the line.

That's Sprintlife as much as investing: full intensity, eyes open, sized so you keep playing. 🐬

One move for this week: picture one simple sheet. Every position, its size, and right next to it, its risk. If one name carries far more risk than its size suggests, rule 5 just paid for this read. Redo it every Friday. 🐯

Want the tools and a community of founders who think this way? Join the Sprint Club, 7 days free: https://www.strategysprints.com

Ready to accelerate now? Book a Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/strategysprint/discovery-call

Happy hunting.

Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆