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Toby Crabel
CEO, Crabel Capital Management (Milwaukee)
Description of Firm: Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., the company also has an adjunct research firm in Eastern Europe. Worldwide, the firm has approximately 90 employees. I started the firm in the early '90s. The track record for the benchmark product started in 1991. The firm's focus has been on short-term trading - we're characterized as one of the more active futures trading firms in the world.
Assets Under Management: More than $3 billion.
Trading Volume: For futures, it could be a couple hundred thousand contracts a day and in the hundreds of millions of dollars in value.
Trading Style: Quantitative and technically driven. We're moving into some other areas, but we're mainly a price-based firm that has quantified price action and moved heavily into straight-through execution, from trading signal to back-office reconciliation. The majority of our trading is still in very short time frames. However, we have diversified greatly and now trade in longer time frames.
Structure of Trading Operations: The trading desk totals about 30 people. Some of the traders also work in the research area. There are about 30 people devoted to research, and in IT there are about 15 people working on infrastructure development and execution platforms. We also have a narrower group of what I would call portfolio managers who oversee the portfolios and think about the allocations and the instruments that are traded, and how to get the best risk-adjusted return we can possibly get in those portfolios. The development of execution algorithms has been a collaborative effort combining the research group's expertise in short-term price predictions, the traders' knowledge of execution and the IT team's expertise in technology.
Professional Background: I began working at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade; I started trading stock options and gravitated toward futures - they were more liquid and provided more opportunities. Over the years, I traded on the floor for short periods, did advisory work and managed accounts. Then I worked for Victor Niederhoffer, who has mentored some very fine traders, including Monroe Trout.
Day-to-Day Responsibilities: Directing research and product development, as well as general oversight of the firm. The firm's COO, Kathryn Daley, runs the day-to-day operations.
Education: Graduate of...