TTU35: The Advantages of Being a Systematic Trader ft. Chris Cruden of Insch Capital Management – 1of2

Our next guest was a British Army Officer and moved to South Africa before finding a career in the financial markets. He is now the CEO of his Managed Futures firm and has worked with some of the industry’s most influential companies and people, including Dean Witter and AHL. The story of his career’s beginnings and the lessons he used to become a systematic trend follower are unique and insightful. You’re sure to learn a lot from this episode.

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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• How Chris came to work with Dean Witter, one of the leading players in the industry back in the 1980’s & 90’s.
• About his days working for AHL in the early 90’s.
• How his career started off as a British Army officer.
• His time in Africa after leaving the army – finding himself in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
• About his first job at Syfrets Trust bank in South Africa as a Gold analyst.
• How he came to do business with Dean Witter Reynolds and after a few years why they hired him.
• After the 1988 crash he found himself back in London and joined AHL.
• In 1993 he went back to New York joined with Robert M Tamiso, a mentor to him.
• Why he looked for a market that was not overcrowded and easily spooked, which was the inter-bank foreign exchange market.
• What AHL was doing in the beginning of the company.
• Why he started trading currencies early on.
• How Bob Tamiso was successful and the way he carried himself that made him successful.
• Why Bob Tamiso’s best advice was to always “show up”.
• About Chris’ golf playing and his ties to Scotland.
• His routine at work and why being a systematic trader makes him boring and bad at marketing, but helps him sleep at night knowing they are going to “show up” the next day.
• About Chris’ goal with his work and why he is happy with the size of his firm and why growth is not the prime focus.
• How he has such low staff turnover and why he likes to work with young people who have never worked anywhere else in the financial world.
• What matters when discussing a firm’s track record and how his programs are setup.
• The building blocks of their trading program and how the money they’ve made has historically come mainly from interest rate differentials.
• What the environment has been like for a currency program in the last 5 years.
• Why he believes the current intervention by The Fed is not so substantially different that his model won’t be able to see good returns in the future
• How he designed his program and what its objective is.
• What currencies he trades and how he trades them.
• Why volatility has been so low but why he sees that it is coming back and why it’s a good thing for his models.

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Resources & Links Mentioned in this Episode:

• Learn about Dean Witter.
• Get more information on AHL.
• For historical background, see this article on Rhodesia.
• Learn more about Lugano, the city where Insch is located.

Follow Niels on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or via the TTU website.

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