Buy-side Perspectives Issue 17 | Page 39

FOREIGN EXCHANGE Buy-side profile ASPECT CAPITAL AND A TYPICAL WORKING DAY Alex Clark Senior Multi Asset Execution Trader at Aspect Capital Alex Clark, Senior Multi-Asset Execution Trader at Aspect Capital, gives us an insight in to life as an execution trader at a systematic hedge fund. As a specialist in Fixed income, FX and commodities, Alex shares his thoughts on how he sees technology innovation changing the buy side trading landscape over the next 5 years as well as his thoughts on algorithms. I am a Senior Multi Asset Execution Trader at Aspect Capital which I joined in 2013. Aspect is a systematic investment manager that was founded in 1997 by Anthony Todd and Martin Lueck, pioneers in the field of quantitative investing. We currently manage $7.3bn in a range of systematic strategies and also increasingly provide customised solutions for investors. As a firm, we put a lot of emphasis on research Winter/Spring 2020 and development, to ensure we provide both innovative products and diversifying performance to our investors. Aspect’s dealing desk handles all execution for our strategies, on a 24/5 basis. The main role of the desk is the oversight and exception management of these trading strategies. We trade over 200 Futures markets globally across approximately 30 exchanges. www.buysideintel.com These include over 100 OTC markets ranging from FX (spot, forwards, swaps, NDFs), Interest Rate Swaps, CDS, Equities, ETFs, Options and more esoteric hard to access markets like Butane and Coal. We have a degree of specialisation across the desk and individuals tend to gravitate towards a particular sector that they have experience in. For instance, my sector happens to be Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities. 39