The ITC Alpha Platform utilizes teams of traders and market specialists across numerous disciplines, all operating with state-of-the-art proprietary analytical technology. This structure encourages broader overall portfolio diversification, with significantly less concentrated risk, and can allow the portfolio managers to focus on smaller, more esoteric anomalies that are often overlooked. ITC Alpha Platform has the ability to allocate investment capital to some of the world’s best and brightest traders in multiple markets, some of which are closed to new investors.
- AG Markets
ITC Alpha Platform’s Ag traders (Our Ag Traders) come from a fundamental background with extensive experience in analyzing supply and demand for hard commodities. Our Ag Traders have over ninety five years combine experience in establishing an extensive global network of contacts in the world’s leading grain companies and global governments and have helped determine and strategize their trading opportunities. While our Ag Traders are acutely aware of the “randomness” of markets, it is our Ag Traders’ beliefs that fundamentals determine the eventual movement of a particular market towards a price, either higher or lower than currently observed. It is for this primary reason that our Ag Traders rely heavily on analyzing each market “fundamentally” and developing a trading strategy to complement their analysis. As price discovery takes place, our Ag Traders monitor a host of market inputs which they deem critically important. Some of these include energy and currency values, domestic and international freight values, underlying cash values associated with futures markets, as well as political events in both importing and exporting countries that can have a substantive effect on global trade flows. Our Ag Traders also employ a fundamental discretionary trading style, drawing upon such considerations as supply/demand analysis, seasonal patterns, weather forecasts, and historical price/use ratios. They attempt to control risk by utilizing spread trades, a low margin-to-equity ratio, option volatility calculations and other proprietary techniques. Trade duration may vary from a few days to several months, although most trades tend to be relatively long-term.
- Exchange & Options Markets
ITC Alpha Platform’s exchange and options trader (Our E&O Trader) has been trading financial markets using proprietary models which were developed over eleven years ago. Our E&O Trader started trading stocks and options as a graduate student at Harvard University. After graduation, he began his professional financial career at a multi-billion hedge fund, soon becoming a global macro trader/analyst. He mainly focused on trading liquid assets including currency, interest rate swap, global equity index/ETF, commodities, commodity related ETF and options on all those markets. He later was in charge of managing legacy assets, including Foreign Bond, Junk Bond, Convertible Bond, Government CDS, Corporate CDS, Loan CDS, High Yield Bond, and High Yield Index.
After a few years, he became a vice president of another multi-billion hedge fund, responsible for developing statistical models in ETF and futures markets. As the founder he successfully launched a trading system to provide investment management to outside high net worth clients. He has a BS in Electronic Engineering, an MS in Computer Sciences, and a PhD in Engineering Sciences.
- Multi Market Spreads
ITC Alpha Platform’s spread traders (Our Spread Traders) enter spreads between different contract months in the same market. Our Spread Traders use a model that predicts the market affects of the rollover of positions by long only commodity funds. The strategy is unique, adaptable, and attempts to avoid the very dangerous moves spreads often make just before contract expiration. The markets traded may include Crude Oil, Heating Oil, Natural Gas, Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, Silver, Live Cattle, Lean Hogs, Sugar, Copper, and Coffee. Our Spread Traders began trading over with the goal of achieving consistent positive returns in global commodity futures markets. The portfolio of markets traded includes only the most liquid commodity futures markets in the USA and Europe. Our Spread Traders’ trading methodology is a blend of discretionary and statistical or system-based models, focusing on short to medium term flat-price trading, intra-day flat-price trading, and a variety of relative-value strategies, including, but not limited to, seasonal/calendar futures spreads and inter-commodity relative-value trades. Each approach is intended to have non-correlated returns. Our Spread Traders may trade options, though predominantly from a long volatility or positive gamma perspective. Our Spread Traders employ statistical models for trading strategy analysis as well as for risk management purposes, alongside analysis of market fundamentals and information flows. Market information is accessed through a broad array of contacts developed by the traders through their many years of experience in commodities trading.
Our Spread Traders have fifteen plus years of actual commodity markets trading experience. In addition, strict risk parameters are assigned to each trader, each strategy and each trade. Risk is monitored on a constant real-time basis through electronic trading platforms and the company’s internal risk-management system.
- Currency & Metals Markets
Alpha Platform’s forex and precious metals traders (Our F&M Traders) use adaptive quantitative processes that are ideally suited to objectively rank and participate in trading opportunities and build diversified portfolios, while simultaneously observing and controlling risk. Our F&M Trader’s short-term models capture profits from range expansion over a one to three day period, while their medium and long-term models look to profit from trend persistence over a one week to six month time frame. Our F&M Trader’s extensively tested strategies are systematic in order to remove subjectivity from the trading operation and to participate efficiently in market dynamics that their research has identified as potentially profitable. The specific market behaviors they participate in can be seen on intraday and one to three day time frames (sudden range expansion) and more medium to longer-term time frames up to six months (serial correlation and trend persistence).
Our F&M Traders carefully and systematically monitor risk from both an individual market and entire portfolio perspective. They also restrict position size to preset computational limits and capital allocation to each market can be increased up to those limits or decreased with reference to the individual strategy’s longer-term performance in any particular market, considering both absolute return and volatility of return. Our F&M Traders may also be decrease trade size on a discretionary basis prior to the release of major economic numbers and reports.
If you wish to obtain more information regarding the ITC Alpha Platform, or you would like to start the process towards joining, please contact us.