{"367031":{"#nid":"367031","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Georgia Tech Spinoff Snags Top Spots In Hedge Fund Battle","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETwo hedge fund strategies powered by algorithms designed at \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/lucenaresearch.com\/\u0022\u003ELucena Research Inc.\u003C\/a\u003E, a Georgia Tech startup founded by Professor \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.cc.gatech.edu\/home\/tucker\/\u0022\u003ETucker Balch\u003C\/a\u003E of the College of Computing and entrepreneur Erez Katz, recently placed first and second in an international trading competition.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe tournament, called \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.battlefin.com\u0022\u003EBattleFin\u003C\/a\u003E, was designed by Wall Street traders Tim Harrington and Brian Tomeo as a way to find new hedge fund talent.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAccording to Bloomberg, hedge funds returned only 2 percent on average in 2014, their worst year since 2011.\u0026nbsp; As 2015 begins, funds are shutting down at a rate not seen since the financial crisis with 461 funds closing in the first half of 2014.\u0026nbsp; BattleFin is one way Wall Street is seeking new talent.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022We decided to address the massive brain drain from Wall Street to Internet start-ups by building an incubator to find the smartest people in the world and give them access to capital,\u201d Harrington said. \u201cThe platform allows them to trade their investment strategies in a fun and competitive way.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe trading competition, which ended Dec. 31, 2014, ran for three months and attracted participants from around the globe.\u0026nbsp; Lucena-designed strategies snagged the top two spots in the Pro division.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe two strategies, codenamed \u0022BlackDog\u0022 and \u0022TieBreaker\u0022 were built by Balch, Katz, and their team at Lucena using Big Data and Machine Learning.\u0026nbsp; The strategies significantly outperformed the market and topped the competition of 15 other funds over the last 3 months. BlackDog, for instance, returned over 25% in 2014.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022We\u0027ve built a sophisticated software and supercomputing infrastructure\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003Ethat allows us to quickly build and test candidate strategies,\u201d Balch said. \u201cBlackDog\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003Eand TieBreaker emerged as the best among many hundreds we\u0027ve tested over\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003Ethe last few years.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELucena is an Atlanta-based financial tech firm that employs experts in computational finance, quantitative analysis, and software development that grew from Georgia Tech and graduate from the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/flashpoint.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EFlashPoint\u003C\/a\u003E incubator.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Two hedge fund strategies powered by algorithms designed at Lucena Research Inc., a Georgia Tech startup founded by Professor Tucker Balch of the College of Computing and entrepreneur Erez Katz, placed first and second in an international competition"}],"uid":"27998","created_gmt":"2015-01-22 16:20:28","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:17:54","author":"Brittany Aiello","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-01-23T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2015-01-23T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"350101":{"id":"350101","type":"image","title":"Tucker Balch compressed","body":null,"created":"1449245702","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:15:02","changed":"1475895075","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:15","alt":"Tucker Balch compressed","file":{"fid":"201077","name":"tucker-balch_0.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tucker-balch_0_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tucker-balch_0_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":11859,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/tucker-balch_0_0.jpg?itok=zHk3BpMG"}}},"media_ids":["350101"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"115481","name":"BattleFin"},{"id":"115511","name":"Brian Tomeo"},{"id":"115491","name":"Erez Katz"},{"id":"115471","name":"Lucena Research"},{"id":"115501","name":"Tim Harrington"},{"id":"1938","name":"Tucker Balch"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETyler Sharp\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPR and Social Media Officer\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["tsharp@cc.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}