The beginning of index investing in the 1970s was the result of a convergence of events. Institutional investors began to use firms to compare the total performance of their hired managers with index benchmarks and found that many of them fell short, especially after the substantial fees the investors were paying. Then, computers had gotten to the point where one could be put in an office setting without having to tear out walls and bring in industrial strength air‐conditioning, raised floors for the cables, and special power systems. It was slightly easier to install a computer in an office building than a particle accelerator, but not by much. This chapter discusses alpha strategies and the anti‐index funds as they are a starting point for all active quantitative computerized equity strategies. A computerized, quantitative investment process is emotion‐free, without distractions, and is willing to take contrarian positions when they are warranted. All one needs is skill, luck, or both in forecasting returns. There is no limit to the amount of information available to one for this and almost no limit to how many times one can pore over it looking for exploitable inefficiencies.