Honestly, it’s pretty easy to create a rough approximation of many popular hedge fund strategies. Like on Quantopian, it’s pretty easy to whip up a simple facto

Honestly, it’s pretty easy to create a rough approximation of many popular hedge fund strategies. Like on Quantopian, it’s pretty easy to whip up a simple factor strategy in a couple hours. The returns aren’t bad, either. The part that is hard are trading costs and slippage. But assuming that retail investor’s capital is relatively small and no trading costs (Alpaca provides this), an individual can do pretty well. The parts that are hard for hedge funds is slippage, illiquidity of assets, trading costs, and client demands. As an individual you really don’t have to worry about those things and consequentially things become much easier. The only downside is that it’s harder to get as much cheap leverage as the big guys. Also some (HFT) strategies are off limits to individuals, but that’s fine, because HFT really isn’t a good way to make money in the first place.