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Analyst, Business Development

Firm Overview

FORT is a hedge fund with $5 billion in AUM, located in metro Washington, DC and New York City.  Founded in 1993, the firm develops and implements proprietary, fully automated, systematic trading strategies in global equity, rates, FX and commodity markets.  The majority of the firm’s activity is over medium and long-term investment horizons based on a variety of fundamental and price data and using myriad quantitative and AI techniques.

Job Summary

The Business Development / Investor Relations Analyst is involved in all facets of client service (strengthening relationships with existing clients) as well as business development (generating business with new investors). Key responsibilities include managing investor requests and investor prospect pipelines, updating client presentations and materials with supervision from FORT colleagues, gathering materials for client ready responses and participation in daily client interactions, and supporting the Business Development and Investor Relations team. The successful candidate will deepen his/her knowledge of financial markets and investment products (especially quantitative and alternative investment products) and develop strong business development skills.

Summary of essential job functions

• Develop strong knowledge of investment products and broader investment landscape
• Manage investor pipeline and help organize meetings for roadshows and conferences
• Work with team on client ready responses and presentations to requests – understand individual client needs and concerns within the context of the market environment
• Participate in onsite meetings and conference calls; document and communicate meeting notes
• Monitor, aggregate and summarize industry data and research
• Participate in production of monthly and quarterly letters, maintain client email lists, and facilitate ad-hoc communications related to firm and market events
• Maintain team mailbox and ensure that incoming messages are routed appropriately and clients/prospects are answered promptly
• Maintain Repository of Strategy and Operations due diligence questions by strategy/vehicle and assist in completing client due diligence requests
• Update all firm information, including Presentations, DDQ’s, Monthly/Quarterly Mailing, Monthly Data Sets, Strategy Recaps, and Performance Databases. Liaise with Legal and Compliance department for approvals on all marketing material. Maintain consistency with new marketing materials
• Maintain new client reports and assist with client onboarding
• Maintain and manage CRM system and all CRM reporting
• Potential to grow into client facing IR/marketing role over time

Minimum Requirements

• Minimum 1-3 years’ experience in the financial services-related experience
• Bachelor's degree, preferably in a related field (Finance, Economics, Accounting, Statistics, Math)
• Knowledge of futures, equities and quantitative strategies is preferred
• Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Superior communications skills both written and verbally
• Strong analytical and mathematical skills; comfortable with quantitative concepts and models

• Strong interpersonal skills, and ability to build relationships and work with professionals around the organization
• Team player with positive attitude and proactive approach to work. Hardworking and eager to learn in a highly intellectual, collaborative environment
• Ability and desire to learn complex products quickly and to multi-task, prioritize and work in a fast-paced environment under tight deadlines

• High level of self-motivation and attention to detail

Apply for Position

Quantitative Equity Researcher

Firm Overview

FORT is a hedge fund with $5 billion in AUM, located in metro Washington, DC and New York City.  Founded in 1993, the firm develops and implements proprietary, fully automated, systematic trading strategies in global equity, rates, FX and commodity markets.  Most of the firm’s activity is over medium and long-term investment horizons based on a variety of fundamental and price data leveraging different quantitative and AI techniques.  The bulk of the firm’s assets are employed in global macro strategies using liquid futures markets as the primary trading instrument.  A growing part of FORT’s business is a single stock equity strategy, Equity Market Neutral (EMN).

Job Summary

The quantitative equity research role involves developing new alpha strategies and improving the current suite of existing FORT equity signals.  The role includes collaboration and close coordination with senior quantitative equity research staff members and working with other groups, including the office of the CIO (OCIO) for portfolio validation and implementation, as well as with performance and risk analytics, software development and business development teams.  This important research role combines hands-on coding and statistical evaluation with team interaction and working closely with other research staff members.

Summary of essential job functions

• Conduct quantitative research on proprietary risk factor models for equities for both fundamental and quant equity long-short strategies.
• Responsible for model evaluation process, including factor selection/recognition, factor return estimation, covariance estimation, idiosyncratic volatility estimation etc.
• Conduct research in stress scenarios; build individual equity stress scenario evaluation models and provide full coverage for the equity long-short strategies.
• Develop, test and maintain applications to evaluate systematic trading strategies.
• Develop and  test new risk/alpha factors and new data sources.
• Collection, cleaning and normalization of structured and unstructured financial data into meaningful and high quality data.
• Integrate multiple data sources in model building.
• Develop hypotheses regarding performance of securities and markets based on traditional and alternative data.
• Presentation of research findings, recommendations and conclusions along with visual representation of results for wider consumption.
• Work with various teams to aggregate information from a variety of sources to create detailed and accurate reports representing the risk and portfolio construction of FORT investment portfolios.
• Work closely with Risk Managers, Portfolio Managers and Analysts to understand and incorporate risk metrics and methodologies within the investment process.
• Perform various projects involving more generalized investment research to support FORT marketing efforts.

Minimum Requirements

• Quantitative advanced degree such as a MS or Ph.D. (preferred) in Finance, Financial Engineering, Machine Learning, Statistics or a related field,
• 7-12 years of prior relevant, industry experience with financial data and/or quantitative equity research (factor modeling, portfolio construction, risk modeling, machine learning and natural language processing)
• Advanced programming knowledge in one or more of the following languages: Python, R, SQL
• Superior verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills
• Aptitude in critical thinking and problem solving
• Demonstrated organizational and time management skills
• Demonstrated ability to work independently, with limited supervision in a fast-paced environment