Research

Following the scientific method is central to our culture as a firm and is the essence of Dr. Coward's vision of a research-centred firm.  Most employees in technical positions will have a scientific background.  All aspects of portfolio management, for example cleaning input data, testing risk management methodologies, and proving the concepts behind trading models, follow the standards of science.  This means attempting to disprove or falsify trading ideas with equal vigor as attempting to validate them; opening data and code to other researchers on staff; preferring simplicity and robustness over complexity and optimization; and subjecting models and processes to an open peer review as well as a period of live, small-scale testing before they are added to the investment portfolio.  The benefit is that the portfolio systems have already been subject to a high degree of testing before they are scaled to their full target risk within the portfolio.