Speaking to Legends

David Mercer is the Chief Executive Officer of LMAX Group, the leading operator of institutional FX and crypto currency execution venues. Following a successful management buyout, David has built LMAX Group into a key player in both the traditional capital markets and the crypto trading industry. Headquartered in the UK, the Group operates 6 exchanges globally and trades in excess of $25billion a day. In 2021, LMAX Group sold a minority stake to J.C. Flowers & Co.About LMAX GroupHeadquartered in London, LMAX Group is a global financial technology company and the leading independent operator of multiple institutional execution venues for FX and crypto currency trading. The Group’s portfolio includes LMAX Exchange, LMAX Global and LMAX Digital. Servicing funds, banks, asset managers and retail brokerages, LMAX Group builds and runs its own high performance, ultra-low latency global exchange infrastructure. Uniquely positioned to offer both FX and crypto trading, LMAX Group is shaping the future of capital markets and is driving the industry transformation to an open, transparent marketplace with fair, precise and consistent execution, based on robust trading technology LMAX Group has a global client base spanning 100 countries and 11 offices worldwide. To find out more, visit www.LMAX.com

 Jordi is the Chief Investment Officer of Selini Capital, a digital assets investment firm, as well as an Angel investor and advisor to tech and crypto startups. He has competed at the highest levels of strategy games competitions and transitioned from professional poker into a successful career in High Frequency Trading.

Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. He was a founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to UBS in 2006. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology.

Howard Morgan is currently the Chairman of B Capital. He co-founded First Round Capital with Josh Kopelman as the first professional Seed Stage Fund, where he remains Senior Advisor. Prior to First Round, Howard helped found Idealab with Bill Gross, and served as President of Renaissance Technologies, which he co-founded with Jim Simons. Prior to his move into the business of technology, Howard served as a professor at the Wharton School and the Moore School, both at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as at Cornell University. He is also an Executive Fellow at UC Berkeley. Howard’s research on user interface technology and the optimization of computer networks was critical to bringing the ARPAnet to Philadelphia in the 1970s. Through this early internet participation, he helped corporate and government agencies use technology to improve the efficiency of both large and small organizations. He also has deep experience with very large databases, and served as the first Editor of the ACM Transactions on Database Systems Journal. Throughout his career, Howard has sought out great people and nurtured them so that they could realize their dreams. His mentees have included both PhD students researching a key topic, and early stage entrepreneurs building companies and taking them from seed stage through initial public offerings. He currently serves as a Director of Idealab, and he is on the board of several non-profits including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and Math For America. He has also served on a number of public company Boards, including Franklin Electronic Publishers and Internet Brands, Inc. He was CEO of Kentek and Franklin during various turnover or transitional periods and in 1997 he was named Delaware Valley Entrepreneur of the Year. Howard is a respected author and a frequent speaker at major industry conferences. Howard received a PhD in Operations Research from Cornell University in 1968, and a BS in Physics from City College of the City University of New York in 1965.

Tim Draper is one of the most successful venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. 35 of his portfolio companies became unicorns which include firms like: Hotmail, Skype, Baidu, Tesla, Twitter and many more.  In this episode, we discuss Tim’s path into finance, how he launched hist first VC fund, what his outlook for the adoption of AI is, and what he thinks about data privacy and venture capitals’ investing getting more quantitative. 

Ewan Kirk, President of GAM Systematic, is a known and recognised figure in quantitative finance. He started his career in finance at Goldman Sachs, spent 13 years there and retired as a partner. Subsequently he launched Cantab Capital Partners, a Cambridge based hedge fund which managed close to $5 billion in assets under management at its peak. In this episode, we discuss Ewan’s path into finance, his time at Goldman, creation of Cantab and the principles it was built on as well as life lessons he learnt along his journey. For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Andrew McCaffery is the Chief Investment Officer of Fidelity International. Coming from humble beginnings Andrew quickly rose through the ranks and over the past 3 decades has been advising, allocating and closely working with some of the most successful and largest hedge funds worldwide. In this interview, you will learn about Andrew’s lifelong dedication to learning, the mindset of challenging yourself and entrepreneurial spirit focused on innovation. For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Mark Mobius is one of the most recognised figures in money management and in 2011 has been named as one of the “50 Most Influential People”. Mark spent over 30 years at Franklin Templeton running its Emerging Markets Investment Trust which grew 500 fold and reached over 50 billion in AUM during his tenure. In 2018, Mark founded Mobius Capital Partners which offers an innovative private equity approach to public markets. In this episode we learn about Mark’s path into finance, his never-ending passion for learning, days at Templeton, key lessons along the journey as well as what he thinks was the biggest contributor to his success and what he wants to leave as his legacy.For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Fiona Frick is the CEO of Unigestion, a Swiss based boutique asset manager with $20bn in AUM, and she has been recognised as one of the most influential women in finance on numerous occasions. In this interview, we discussed how Unigestion created a collaborative ecosystem for conducting cutting edge research, the importance and adoption of ESG, the general trend for passive vs active management and how to be an early adopter of emerging trends. For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Alex Lipton is a prominent figure in quant finance. He spent over 20 years on the sell-side, held a number of prestigious positions in academia and received the first quant of the year award by Risk.net. He is the CTO of fintech startup Silamoney that is seeking to revolutionise financial services through distributed ledge technology. In this episode, we discuss how Alex got into quant finance and raised though the ranks, how to identify and build teams, why he thinks that stable coins are a good alternative to fiat and some of the possible limitations to their adoption. For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Victor Niederhoffer is one of the most famous investors and a true pioneer. After rubbing shoulders with a few of the future Nobel Laureates at the University of Chicago, he started a trading firm and made $20 million from the starting capital of $50k within 6 months. In the 90s, he was the right hand man of George Soros and with a 34% rate of return over 20 years, in 1996, he was recognised as the world’s best trader. However, next year he was on the wrong side of the trade and lost all of the capital. In this episode, we discuss the emergence of quant investing, how he started trading for Soros, what are some of the lessons he learnt while being an active market participant for 60 years straight and why he think that Jesse Livermore was a horrible trader.For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Mark Yusko, Founder and CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, is a household name in hedge fund investing and spent over 30 years identifying, seeding and growing some of the most successful funds. In this episode, we discuss the mindset and approach of discovering and investing in the next big technological innovation, the evolution of hedge funds, state of investing during COVID19, what are some of the implications of FED's infinite Quantitative Easing and why he is bearish on the fiat-fiasco and bullish on crypto.For more information, see our episode show notes on our website.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Marty Lueck, Research Director and President of Aspect Capital, is a true pioneer and over the past 3 decades helped to transfer and evolve managed futures. He co-founded one of the best known CTAs - AHL, which stands for the surname of the three Co-Founders - Michael Adam, David Harding and Marty Lueck. AHL grew from 100 thousand to 300 million in AUM and pushed the boundaries of innovation. After selling AHL to Man Group he co-founded Aspect Capital, a quantitative hedge fund with over 7 billion in AUM. In this episode Marty shares the story of AHL, the importance of scientific rigour and evolution, and main drivers behind CTA going mainstream. We also discuss the creation and rise of Aspect Capital, and recent developments that Marty is particularly excited about.For links, resources and book recommendations by Marty, see our episode show notes on our website.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Professor David Hand, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College London, has published over 300 scientific papers and 30 books, won many prestigious awards and was a president of the Royal Statistical Society twice. During this interview, Professor Hand explains what is dark data and why this simple, but highly influential concept, is widely overlooked. He also talks about the edge of the most successful quant hedge funds and why statistics is fundamentally different to mathematics. See our show notes for more information.We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Professor Campbell Harvey is a Professor of Finance at Duke University. He has 70 thousand citations and is one of the most recognised researchers in finance. Professor Harvey spent over 33 years in academia, published over 125 papers and advised some of the largest and most influential financial institutions. In our latest episode, he shares stories and lessons he learned while studying under several Nobel laureates. He also explains why he claims that over 50% of claimed research findings in financial economics are likely false and what drives him as a scholar. Furthermore, he expands on the differences in incentives between the industry and academia and what is the likely path to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. For links, resources and book recommendations by Prof Harvey, see our episode show notes on our website. We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey. 

Steve Mobbs was the co-founder of OxAM, a quantitative hedge fund that peaked at $5 billion in AUM. In this episode, Steve gives his behind the scene of the hedge fund world and expands on his experience. You will learn how and why his first fund failed and what lessons he learned from that experience. He also explains how he started OxAM and grew it from a small team with AUM of 10 million to a multi-billion dollar powerhouse with over 100 employees. Steve also goes in length to discuss the trade-offs between being small and nimble vs large and slow to adjust.For links, resources and book recommendations by Steve, see our episode show notes on our website. We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Aaron Brown is the author of The Poker Face of Wall Street and former Chief Risk Officer at AQR. He was a top professional poker player in the 1970s and also honed his quantitative risk-taking skills in sports betting and advantage gambling. He is one of the pioneers of risk management and spent over 35 years on Wall Street as a trader, portfolio manager. In this episode, he tells us about his early days of gambling, career on Wall street, evolution in risk management, and shares his thoughts on the fund's performance during COVID-19 pandemic. For links, resources and book recommendations by Aaron, see our episode show notes on our website. We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Francesco Filia, CEO of Fasanara Capital, started his career at J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch and then co-founded Fasanara Capital in 2011. In this episode, we learn about Francesco’s days on the sell-side and the underlying principles on which he built his hedge fund. He also talks about why he is bearish on the market but bullish on the economy and why he thinks VaR is a bad measure of risk what is a better one. We close by Francesco’s outlook for the asset management industry. For links, resources and book recommendations by Francesco, see our episode show notes on our website. We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.

Victor Haghani has been actively involved in the market for over 35 years and was one of the founding partners of Long-Term Capital Management. LTCM was one of biggest hedge funds, with $128 billion assets, until 1998 almost collapsing and causing a global financial crisis if the Federal Reserve didn't step in. In this episode, we discuss Victor’s early days at Salomon Brothers, the launch of LTCM, and the subsequent debacle. Victor reflects on his past and discusses lessons he learned from those experiences and how his investing style changed along the way. For links, resources and book recommendations by Victor, see our episode show notes on our website. We value your feedback and we would appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Please take our survey.