There is no obligation to invest. Your information will not be used for any other purposes than to keep you informed about this opportunity.
Manish Jhunjhunwala: MIT PhD Chemical Engineering/Physics of fluids, McKinsey
Cem Ozkaynak: Cornell Electrical Engineering, UBS
Select Investors and Advisors
Ankur Moitra: MIT Computer Science and AI Lab & Professor of Mathematics
Art Samberg: Pequot Capital, Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Rob Wadsworth: Harbourvest Partners, Board Member, Former CEO
Sandy Pentland: MIT Media Lab Professor. Stanford HAI Fellow
Semyon Dukach: OneWay VC, Partner, Former MIT Blackjack team leader
1. Performance
HQ turned $100,000 invested in September of 2020, into >$205,000+ as of the end of August 2025. About a 17% annualized return since inception, and a total return since inception of 105%. Not bad. This is compared to about 90% for the market benchmark that included all 3 – S&P 500, S&P midcap, and Russell 2000. Benchmark is described below
2. Benchmark
What we compare HQ’s performance with, matters. HQ’s benchmark for comparison includes all 3 large categories of the market to try to represent a full basket of US equity exposure. Specifically, HQ’s benchmark is 30% S&P 500, 40% S&P Midcap, and 30% Russell 2000. The S&P 500 itself is now skewed more than 35% by the magnificent 7, so this all-cap benchmark really doesn’t have the same diversification problem that the S&P 500 has been criticized for lately.
3. Composition & Diversification
30 stocks, all equal weight. That’s how HQ is composed. Compare that with the 35% or more of the S&P 500 that’s concentrated in the Magnificent 7 – and many market scholars have recently voiced concern – well, what are the other 493 doing in there? Why 30 in HQ? Simply, because the benefits of diversification taper off meaningfully after 20, and you don’t get much after 30.
4. Upside vs downside
Why and how has HQ outperformed? By protecting wealth, and not losing money.
For every dollar that HQ’s market benchmark goes down, HQ has lost much less – on average only about 75 cents, and for every dollar that the benchmark goes up, it has made about 90 cents.
As smart money says: you lose 50%, and you need 100% gains to make up for your loss. Let that sink in! The best way to win long-term is to not lose too much. Of course, we learn that in 2nd-grade arithmetic with the charm of how percentages work – a 20% loss needs to be paired with a 25% gain just to make you whole.
5. Process, Quality, and Philosophy
HQ stocks are really what the name says: quality companies, sustainable revenue growth, strong margins, and cash flow-producing firms. They have defensible balance sheets that have helped HQ weather market storms. HQ has a median market capitalization of over $20 billion, and no pick of less than $2 billion in market value.
We’ve focused on making very few decisions ourselves – instead, we let the machine bear out the right decisions with strong data. In a nutshell, we followed one principle: Understandable AI. Human & Machine.
How does that work?
The overall process is data-driven, we process billions of data points - literally - and combine with human intuition and gut check – so we verify, and audit everything. Most important - we never stop improving.
Great – what’s next?
Hope you use the above 5 criteria to evaluate your own favorite equity portfolio. Do compare HQ with whatever else you want – any other app or offering out there – whether a specific index or portfolio you love – Magnificent 7, or Nasdaq, or S&P, or Betterment, Wealthfront, or if you still swear by Cathy Wood’s ARKK. We’ve made all the comparisons since our very beginning in September 2020. If you find things that have worked better for you – tell us about it.
Feel free to complete the form above to hear the HQ story firsthand or ask Glenn Caldicott, the CIO of our local Boston area partner firm Empirical, and others on his team, about the journey. You can learn more about HQ, and Trefis’ newer portfolio strategies like Bayesian and RV - of course ask more about our thinkHub 1-million-analyst analytics platform, that powers it all, and can handle data from weather and earthquakes to investment analysis!