Start-up hedge fund live on FNX ASP

BELLEVUE, WA – Tahoma Capital, a recently formed hedge fund manager with a global macro, multi-asset focus, has implemented Philadelphia-based vendor FNX Solution's Aspen Hedge hosted trading and risk management system.

Aspen Hedge provides real-time access to current position and P&L data, customised report capabilities, as well as risk monitoring by position, currency or maturity. Asset types supported by Aspen Hedge include foreign exchange, fixed income, equities, interest rate derivatives and commodities.

Tahoma, founded by veterans of Microsoft's Microsoft Treasury asset management unit, required a cross-asset system able to support the manager's intricate risk control framework.

According to Max Giolitti, chief risk officer at Tahoma, issues of hosted delivery, multiple asset support, robust connectivity to counterparties, and speedy implementation factored heavily in the manager's decision to sign with FNX.

"Ideally we wanted to concentrate just on the trading aspects of what we're doing – buying low, selling high and using technology to do that, so the availability of Aspen Hedge as an ASP was very attractive to us," Giolitti explains, adding that not many third-party trading systems on the market offered adequate cross-asset trading capabilities.

"The state of third-party offerings was a surprise to me – I thought there would be more variety of systems available. There were several equity-only products, but we needed more capabilities than that. It's very hard to add support for an asset type when you don't start with it."

Giolitti says it took about three months for Tahoma to go live on Aspen Hedge, but he foresees an ongoing implementation process to add new capabilities as they're developed.

"Implementations are never finished in my opinion—we're still working on new capabilities to be implemented in the future."