Are there compact heavy four-quark bound states?

We present an exact method to study four-quark systems based on the hyperspherical harmonics formalism. We apply it to several physical systems of interest containing two heavy and two light quarks using different quark-quark potentials. Our conclusions mark the boundaries for the possible existence of compact, nonmolecular, four-quark bound states. While QQ (n) over bar(n) over bar states may be stable in nature, the stability of Q (Q) over barn (n) over bar states would imply the existence of quark correlations not taken into account by simple quark dynamical models