SUBSCRIBERS ONLYManoj Narang wears a lot of hats. He's a technologist who built a low-latency platform and developed a monitoring system for the US SEC. He's an executive who runs a hedge fund and an HFT group. And he's an outspoken champion of data-driven decision-making. So why is he promoting ideas that could hurt his business?

SUBSCRIBERS ONLYHe was at university by the age of 14. A decade later he became the youngest-ever senior vice president at Prudential Securities. Skip ahead a few years and he was buying a Chinese commodities exchange, soon to be transformed into a high-tech trading operation. Charles Huang is clearly someone who knows how to do things quickly. Now, as chief executive of Bond Trust, he is staking out new territory on the Chinese mainland as one of the few local investment companies to employ algorithmic trading techniques. Adam Cox hears all about his remarkable story and what he thinks of the trading scene in China.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY"There was no budget constraint, just a goal," says Richard Franklin, CEO of Boronia Capital, summarising his brief to start with a 'clean slate' and deliver a fully automated and co-located trading operation. How often do you get to say that, and how often do you achieve such a goal - as Richard Franklin did without significant disruption, while maintaining a significant alpha generating outcome, and within a few years? Andy Webb went to meet Richard Franklin and Boronia Capital's head of research, Chris Mellen.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLYThere are beginners in this business... and there are beginners. GHF Group is the second kind. Big and global, GHF Group is an established financial services holding company that includes diverse, independent businesses: global clearing, investments, and trading. The trading business includes experienced traders and other market professionals, and has recently started a move into "the business of algorithms" that so far, has looked less like a learning experience for the Group, and more like a potentially big opportunity for the rest of us - for quants, model-builders and just about anybody else with an idea worth automating. Andy Webb went to meet Ron Hertshten, a managing director in GHF Group who is responsible for algo trading, to discuss.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLYSonia Schulenburg is CEO of Level E Capital, and thus the principal human intelligence behind the MAYA Fund, which uses 'cutting-edge advances' in artificial intelligence to make its investment decisions. The fund has been fully invested since January 2011. Dr Schulenburg says: "Since then we have been proud to be ranked consistently in the Top 10 Long/Short Equity funds by the global hedge fund databases we report to, both in performance and low volatility." That's quite something, and William Essex went to find out more.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLYFounded in January 2010 by Brian Tehako, TnT Group specialises in intra-day trading of futures products “in a macro-economic style” that innovates by combining automation with a conventional prop shop. Driven by the belief that communication is key to success, TnT Group is open to ideas from traders, and, as Larry Levy discovers, represents a compelling argument that HFT is not the only future.

FREE ARTICLEStephane Coquillaud is a relative newcomer to algo trading with a long background in exotic option trading and risk management. He algo-trades G5 Forex currencies for Toronto Dominion Bank Securities (TD Securities), using a market-model concept and artificial intelligence techniques. In this time of heightened anxiety about market and wider risk, not to mention regulation, how does Stephane Coquillaud navigate the complexities of the currency markets, and what technology does he iuse to do it? Larry Levy, Automated Trader’s globetrotting Head of Photography, went to meet him at TD Securities’ very new London headquarters, at Number Sixty Threadneedle Street, to find out.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLYMaintaining performance during volatility regime change has always been a key challenge for investment managers, but never more so than over the last couple of years. Automated Trader’s CEO, John Howard, spoke to Philip Stoltzfus and Scott Ganis of Thayer Brook Partners about their systematic approach to maintaining returns as volatility becomes a moving target.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLYWe vary the theme this month, away from this feature’s customary focus on a purely “machine-driven” fund. John Howard, Publisher of Automated Trader, went to meet the team behind the Danix Master Fund, where a system-based approach co-exists happily with, and complements, a much more hands-on style of trading.

FREE ARTICLELaunched in November 2007, the Ion Fund is “a 100% systematic fund designed to operate in highly liquid and listed instruments” [major stocks, stock indices, government bonds and currencies]. It came through 2008, the year of vanishing liquidity and corporate bail-outs, with a net 2008 return of 24% (fund objective: an uncorrelated 20%pa). How does a fund like that provide a return like that in a year like that? The Ion Fund’s manager Dennis Lohfert spoke to Automated Trader’s Editor, William Essex, about achieving outperformance in interesting times.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLYMiles Kumaresan, Head of Quantitative Trading at TransMarket Group Ltd, talks to Automated Trader’s Editor, William Essex, about the development of the company’s High Frequency Quantitative Trading Group.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLYLegal and General Investment Management (LGIM) has some £300bn in assets under management invested globally. Almost half of this is invested in equities. Mary McCave, LGIM’s senior equity dealer, discusses how LGIM’s trading desk stays on top of the trade.

REGISTERED VIEWERSBlackCat Trading Technologies’ Matthew Breakwell and John Reeve explain their distinctive approach to building a quantitative trading platform and outline their plans for exploiting it.

REGISTERED VIEWERSCommunicating Ltd’s path to becoming one of London’s most profitable trading operations started with a revolutionary matching engine that fitted on a floppy disk. Vladan Jovanovic, Managing Director, tells AT how a stripped-down approach to trading and technology has been a consistent factor behind Communicating’s success.

FREE ARTICLEDmitry Bourtov runs the US-based hedge fund Solaris, as well as heading a group at the Moscow offices of data vendor CQG that combines the activities of a quant shop and a specialist financial software developer. Bourtov talks to AT about the process by which he and his team design and manage a fleet of automated trading models across hundreds of markets around the globe.

FREE ARTICLEAutomation, both in terms of trading and back office processes, is an intrinsic part of Amplitude Capital’s day to day operation. AT talks to two of Amplitude’s principals, CEO Karsten Schroeder and CFO John Harrison about the firm’s technology, methods and ambitions.