Insights: Quant Investing

Wei Xie

Director – Capital Markets Group and Co-Head of Multi-Strategy Investing

OPtrust

Wei Xie is a Director in the Capital Markets Group at OPTrust, one of Canada’s largest pension funds with assets of $20 billion and investment professionals in Toronto, London and Sydney.

Wei leads the management of the external public markets program that covers a broad spectrum of liquid strategies, which includes equities, credit and hedge funds. Wei also spearheads the investment innovation efforts at OPTrust by co-chairing the Incubation Portfolio Investment Committee, with a particular focus on Crypto and the application of Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence.

Wei held various progressively senior positions at OPTrust. Prior to this, Wei was the Chief-of-Staff to the Chief Investment Officer, when he supported and advised the CIO in his day-to-day management of OPTrust’s Investment Division. Prior to that, he served as an Investment Strategist for the Global Investment Strategy Group, and an Associate Portfolio Manager within the Private Markets Group.

Wei earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada.

Keith Black

Managing Director – Program Director

FDP Institute

Keith Black has over thirty years of financial market experience, serving approximately half of that time as an academic and half as a trader and consultant to institutional investors. He currently serves as Managing Director, Program Director FDP Charter at the FDP Institute.

During his most recent role as Managing Director, Content Strategy at CAIA was responsible for Curriculum development. Previous to that Keith was a valued team member at Ennis Knupp + Associates, Keith advised foundations, endowments and pension funds on their asset allocation and manager selection strategies in hedge funds, commodities, and managed futures. Other experiences include commodities derivatives trading, stock options research and Cboe floor trading, and building quantitative stock selection models for mutual funds and hedge funds. Dr. Black previously served as an assistant professor and senior lecturer at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Keith has contributed to the CFA Digest, and has published in The Journal of Wealth Management, The Journal of Trading, The Journal of Investing, and The Journal of Alternative Investments, among others. He is the author of the book “Managing a Hedge Fund,” as well as co-author of the second, third, and fourth editions of the CAIA Level I and Level II curriculum. Dr. Black was named to the Institutional Investor magazine’s list of “Rising Stars of Hedge Funds” in 2010.

Dr. Black earned a BA from Whittier College, an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, and a PhD from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He has earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and was a member of the inaugural class of both CAIA and FDP members.

Erik Forseth

Quantitative Research

Graham Capital

Erik Forseth is a Senior Researcher on the Quantitative Strategies team at Graham Capital Management, L.P. (“GCM”). Dr. Forseth is involved with all aspects of the quantitative research process, including model design and portfolio construction and deployment, with a focus on machine learning applications.  He joined the firm in April 2016. Prior to joining GCM, Erik received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016, and a B.S. in physics and B.A. in mathematics from Wake Forest University in 2009.