Last One Standing

Sep 2026

A friend of mine recently competed in a brutal ultramarathon called the Backyard Ultra. We thought it was a fitting parallel for what we are trying to achieve with the Stega Quantedge Fund — staying in the race for as long as possible.

Our Backyard Ultra

As the first institutional investor in Quantedge in 2011, we have taken a similar no-finish-line approach.

Since inception, Quantedge has grown roughly 40x, to more than US$7 billion in assets today. At that scale, capacity eventually becomes a constraint. Should Quantedge reach capacity, new investors may no longer be accepted and, ultimately, capital from existing investors may need to be returned.

This is where being early matters.

By virtue of being the first and betting big on Quantedge, we hold some of the largest and oldest shares in the fund, with seriously dusty serial numbers. When Quantedge eventually has to say goodbye to outside investors, capital may be returned on a LIFO (last-in-first-out) basis. If so, more recent investors would be redeemed first, while older investors could potentially remain invested longer.

Importantly, the benefit of these older holdings is shared across Stega Global. As a commingled sub-fund, all investors participate proportionally in the entire pool of Quantedge shares, including those held since its early years. This is also something we actively manage in the background: whenever investors redeem, we tend to prune the newer underlying Quantedge shares first, allowing the average ‘age’ of the remaining portfolio to increase over time.

Many Last Laps

Our ancient shareholdings could buy us ‘extra time’ in the fund, which means, more chances to double your money for investors who are redeemed later. For the record, Quantedge has doubled every 3 to 5 years on average.

That is the key difference between simply being invested… and staying invested alongside Quantedge’s earliest institutional investor.

For those who are curious, the particular Backyard Ultra race did not have a winner this year. The final three runners decided to stop running and jointly recorded a DNF (Did Not Finish). Perhaps that is the best parallel of all.

Sometimes, the real prize is simply having more time on the clock. We have been in the race since 2011. From the start, our philosophy has been singular — to be the Last One Standing.

Best regards,

Stega Investment Team