Professional Background:

Long term, my background was actually as a physicist. I was lured to London by the streets apparently being paved with gold, which, of course, I realized was not quite true. But I started life in the futures markets, in financial contracts in London — began in fixed interest, moved into equities and ended up making markets in stock index options at UBS. That was the first 10 years, and it was very good training in trading, risk management, etc., together with a wide variety of instruments. In 1993, I moved to managed futures. Whereas I was attracted initially to equities in the early part of my career because I thought they were a bit more colorful, as opposed to the different shades of gray of fixed interest — commodities were positively psychedelic by comparison. There were a great variety of markets, and it was very interesting to see ways of being able to trade these markets in a computerized fashion. So I passed through various well-known entities in managed futures, all the time picking up pieces of experience, until I met up with Natasha, Stephen and Alex. This new collaboration enabled us to develop the system into a real product and build a successful business around it in 2000.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities:

I am jointly responsible with Alex Brunwin for the Research & Technology department at Altis.

Education:

Physics graduate, Imperial College London. Completed three years of a Ph.D. program in mathematics.

Fun Fact

We didn’t start out with a large amount of funds under management, and we had to be particularly thrifty with the cash that we had. Therefore, trying to build a name for ourselves in the industry had to be done on a budget. An example, of which we are rather proud, is that in the early years the entire company — the four founders — attended a conference in Barcelona for a grand total of $300. That sum included flights, accommodations, conference and entertaining! Those were the days!

BIG PICTURE

Biggest trading opportunities for the firm?

We try not to be sector-specific or region-specific in our return generation. Our whole style is not to be master of a particular market, but to be masters of trading techniques in general and portfolio management in particular to bring it all together.

Difference between trading for an alternative investment firm vs. trading for a traditional asset manager?

My suspicion is, since I’ve been there, that if you’re trading at a bank, you’re typically trading within a very narrow space. And, as such, you become sort of a specialist within that market space, and you can make money out of that specialist knowledge. But what we’re doing is specializing not in particular instruments or particular sectors of the marketplace, but in trading techniques that are actually quite general in nature. The second aspect, certainly from my experience working in banks, is that a lot of decisions are made from the seat of the pants, backed up by as much or as little corroborative information as someone requires. For us, there’s no discretion on a day-to-day basis as far as what we buy or sell. There’s only discretion in the long term in how we build the trading system as a whole.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

One is being involved in running a business. The second is overseeing the trading system, trying to find ways of improving what we do currently. That latter part is certainly challenging. We’ve done the easy bits, in terms of the trading system we have, and so generating better returns from what we’ve got has become somewhat harder. Another challenging aspect is keeping an eye on the many markets that we trade, and making sure that the portfolios that we’ve put together for our clients are consistent and doing what we expect them to be doing, and the trading decisions that we are making on their behalf are intelligent ones under the circumstances. It’s a complex game that we’re involved in.

Major Industry Trend

There is this concentration among investment professionals of moving faster and faster, and in shorter-term time frames. And my suspicion is that it’s somewhat misguided, in that you’ll do well going faster and faster if you’re faster than everyone else. But if you’re somewhat behind, then going faster and faster may well only yield slightly incremental results compared to what you have already. Over time, it’s actually a lot easier to extract returns. That is why our systems tend to be longer-term-based with shorter-term timing components, rather than shorter term in nature.