Pej Hamidi is the founder of Alpha Insights LLC, a stand alone fund manager carved out of Compellon, his former employer specializing in prescriptive intelligence using proprietary AI and supervised machine learning. While the majority of Pej's running models are quantitative ... more
Pej Hamidi is the founder of Alpha Insights LLC, a stand alone fund manager carved out of Compellon, his former employer specializing in prescriptive intelligence using proprietary AI and supervised machine learning. While the majority of Pej's running models are quantitative long/short portfolios, he has agreed to share some of his best directional ideas.
As a quantitative multi-strategy, multi-asset class trader with an emphasis around automated equity trading. Pej employs proprietary multi frequency models to generate consistent, uncorrelated returns with low volatility. Models are designed in Python and C++ with stand alone portfolio optimization and allocation algorithms managing the entire strategy book.
Market neutral equity portfolios are rebalanced daily while idiosyncratic directional trades are held between a few minutes to a several days. By combining active portfolio management with statistical arbitrage, Alpha Insights captures alpha by trading around core portfolio positions. Returns are enhanced by selling volatility against existing book holdings. This "volatility overlay" is determined by a multi-sigma predictor developed with Compellon's AI to recognize 3 sigma or greater events about to occur in the SPX over the next 5, 10 or 20 days. Depending on the multi-sigma trigger (i.e which one fired, how many fired, market internals), Pej will make a tactical decision to either cover some short volatility, close all short vola positions, and in some cases, go long vola where he thinks there is a big gamma trade setting up.
Using proprietary AI, Pej effectively deconstructed the financial market into 26 custom factors. These factors were then used to train their supervised ML engine. In basic terms, each factor determines how they position the trading book as well as any additional correlation hedges that might be used.
Pej is a big believer in the notion that alpha is trapped within market beta and there are effective ways to extract this alpha using advanced analytical tools.
"If it hasn't happened before, it can't be predicted. Everything else is predictable. "
less
| President, Founding Member | |
| Alpha Insights LLC | |
| September 2018 - Present (4 years) |
| Senior VP, Quantitative Trading and Capital Markets | |
| Compellon | |
| January 2017 - October 2018 (1 year 10 months) | |
|
Compellon has a powerful AI analytics platform with customers from manufacturing, IoT, business intelligence, sales, marketing, and consumer loyalty. I joined to extend the company's reah into quantitative trading desks. After building several high value predictors, we decided to launch Alpha Insights to build a stand alone AUM business. |
| Quantitative & Discretionary Cash Equities Trader | |
| Advanced Quantitative Proprietary Trading Firm | |
| February 2014 - March 2016 (2 years 2 months) | |
|
Quantitative and Discretionary trading across cash equities. |
| Algorithm Developer & Product Manager | |
| Quantitative Trading Solutions | |
| June 2010 - January 2014 (3 years 8 months) | |
|
Managed execution trading and process improvement for the entire life cycle of order flow. |
| Vice President | |
| Apogee Asset Management | |
| January 2004 - November 2009 (6 years) | |
|
Global Macro Hedge Fund engaged in multi-asset class trading who also pioneered several statistical arbitrage and other quantitative models. |
| University of Texas | |
| MS | |
| 2015 / 2017 | |
| Software Egineering |
| UC San Diego | |
| BA Philosophy and Economics | |
| 2010 / 2013 | |
| B.A Philosophy; Economics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Behavioral Finance |
| 101 Rules of Trading Discipline | |
| Pej Hamidi | |
| McGraw-Hill | |
| 04/04/2004 | |
|
Too many trading rule books lose readers in complex mathematics and boring tales. 101 keeps things simple giving traders the essential rules they will need from capital preservation to aggressive directional tactics for short and long term success. Written by Pej Hamidi, a well-known portfolio manager and "Philosopher Capitalist" as his friends call him, this book is suited for every type of trader. For every rule, there is a brief description and explanation, along with a real-world example to illustrate the idea in action. Dividing his 101 rules into three main parts -- Trading Disciplines, Market Disciplines, and Personal Disciplines -- Hamidi provides straightforward guidance and advice including: |
Latest Comments
Upwork: Substantial Upside Opportunity In Workforce Mobility
When $UPWK debuted back in October of last year, the shares were oversubscribed by a factor of 20x. A colleague of mine noted that "nearly every investor that met with the company on the roadshow put in an order". They are a first mover and the market opportunity is estimated to be around $560 BILLION.
One potential catalyst for the share price which has fallen off the radar since the December swoon, is their partnership with $MSFT. On Dec 7, #Microsoft announced a partnership with UPWK to launch the Microsoft 365 freelance Toolkit. "The toolkit is an integrated workforce collaboration solution that helps enterprises work with freelancers at scale and is powered by Microsoft 365 and Upwork Enterprise". This move was very much inspired by Microsoft's own initiative to embrace a flexible talent model. Microsoft launched an internal pilot program to give employees access to flexible, freelance talent. Within the past year, Microsoft completed over 2100 projects on Upwork. These projects included writing, research, video editing, translation, design and data science. This level of integration is reminiscent of the early partnership between Microsoft and LinkedIn before Microsoft acquired them.
The market opportunity for #Upwork is huge, expanding and mostly untapped. So where are the analysts? This has a great deal to do with how the investment banking model works and a little known sell-side strategy called "momentum ignition". This involves a (possibly coordinated) series of "beat and raise" actions by sell-side analysts intended to trigger a mark-up phase in the stock price following a period of accumulation for their institutional client's books. To accumulate shares, the stock needs to have unrestricted float. Their post-IPO restriction period has not ended yet. Contrary to popular belief, stocks don't necessarily go down when the IPO restriction ends.
UPWK becomes an extremely juicy takeover candidate for a company like MSFT as the latter is positioning itself to dominate the B.I. and workforce productivity markets.
The rate at which companies are shifting towards a flexible workforce is accelerating and we are in the early stages of a systemic shift that will see flexible workforce models becoming the norm.