Strategy families
Twelve strategy families
Professional investing is not one skill. Alpha Bench divides it into twelve families, from valuing a business to pricing the tails of a distribution, each with its own tasks, metrics and failure modes. Together they cover the main schools of professional investing. Every system is evaluated on each family separately, so strength in one cannot hide weakness in another.
The twelve families
How each family is evaluated01
Fundamental investing
Judging what a business is worth, and buying it for less.
- Value
- Growth
- Qualityand 4 more
02
Indexing & asset allocation
Building and maintaining diversified portfolios across assets and a lifetime.
- Passive investing
- Multi-asset allocation
- Rebalancingand 3 more
03
Factor investing & quantitative selection
Systematic stock selection from measurable, persistent characteristics.
- Multi-factor
- Smart beta
- Index enhancementand 1 more
04
Macro & cross-asset
Positioning across rates, currencies, commodities and equities on the economic cycle.
- Discretionary macro
- Systematic macro
- Asset rotationand 3 more
05
Trend & momentum
Following prices that keep moving in the same direction.
- Trend following
- Time-series momentum
- Cross-sectional momentumand 3 more
06
Mean reversion & statistical arbitrage
Betting that stretched prices and spreads snap back.
- Short-term reversal
- Pairs trading
- Factor-residual tradingand 1 more
07
Behavior, sentiment & flows
Reading what investors feel, say and do — and where the money moves.
- Sentiment
- Narratives
- Information-driven tradingand 3 more
08
Event-driven
Pricing the before and after of corporate and market events.
- Mergers & acquisitions
- Earnings
- Spin-offsand 5 more
09
Relative value & spread trading
Trading the price of one asset against a close relative.
- Cash–futures basis
- Calendar spreads
- Inter-commodity spreadsand 2 more
10
Carry & holding-return strategies
Earning the return an asset pays simply for being held.
- Interest-rate differentials
- Futures roll yield
- Funding ratesand 1 more
11
Options & volatility
Trading uncertainty itself — its level, shape and tails.
- Volatility relative value
- Long & short volatility
- Option income overlaysand 3 more
12
Fixed income & credit
Lending to governments and companies, and getting paid for the risk.
- Publicly traded government bonds
- Corporate bonds
- Creditand 2 more
Evaluation tracks
How each family is evaluated
Every family is tested on the same four tracks, whether the system under test is a model, a harness or a vertical agent.
- 01
Analysis
Point-in-time research tasks. The system works only from documents and data available on a given date and produces an answer that can be checked.
- 02
Simulation
Historical market replay. The system decides one date at a time, sees only what was known then, and pays realistic costs and frictions.
- 03
Live
Forward evaluation on live data. Decisions are recorded before outcomes exist, so the answer cannot be recalled from training data.
- 04
Client
Serving a human user. The system has to understand their situation, explain plainly, disclose risk honestly and say no when it should.
Help shape the tasks in your field.
If you work with one of these strategies as a practitioner or researcher, we would welcome your help with tasks, scoring rubrics and failure-mode checks.