With more than 30 years experience of research and innovation, Man AHL has been one of the longest running systematic managers.
Man AHL was founded in 1987 as a Commodity Trading Advisor ("CTA"), with Man Group initially taking a majority stake in the business in 1989 before acquiring the remaining share in 1994. From an initial focus on trend-following strategies, Man AHL has evolved into a multi-strategy quant business.
While leveraging from a long standing experience, Man AHL also thrives to constantly promote innovation and unconventional and unconstrained thinking.
1987
1992
- Real-time Intra-day trading
1994
1995
2002
- Fully automated electronic FX trading
2005
2006
2009
- Opened Man AHL Trading Centre in Hong Kong
2014
- Machine Learning
- AHL TargetRisk Programme
2015
2016
- Man AHL Institutional Solutions
2017
- Equity market ESG screening
- AIR execution
2018
- AHL Macro Programme
- Firm-wide execution team created
2019
- RI Exclusion list applied accross our single name universe
2020
Our investment programmes are based on a long-standing philosophy that markets exhibit persistent anomalies, such as price trends, mean reversion, carry or other repeatable patterns, which can be identified through careful statistical analysis. We believe many of these inefficiencies result from behavioural biases, for example risk aversion, anchoring and herding.
Our core principles centre on diversification, efficiency and risk control. In addition to our continuous efforts to expand the range of trading strategies, great effort is afforded to researching new markets in order to maximise portfolio diversification. With thousands of trading signals generated each day, we believe it is vitally important to streamline trade execution – including order netting, automating flow, maintaining a breadth of counterparties and backup trading centres which can operate 24 hours per day.
Risk management is built into all our models, and is further enhanced by our independent Risk team who use proprietary systems developed since our founding in 1987.
Engaging with our clients in a strategic partnership is our number one priority. We strive to exceed expectations through the quality of our investment solutions and by providing outstanding levels of client service and transparency.
We offer a broad and diversified range of systematic programmes according to the following three categories:
Momentum
Man AHL has been trading momentum strategies for around three decades. Today, flagship momentum programmes access a broad array of momentum models spanning over 800+ markets.
Multi-Strategy
These programmes offer unconstrained access to the entire suite of Man AHL’s systematic momentum, mean-reversion, and fundamental models. The Institutional Solutions Programme gives larger investors the opportunity to customise their investment to suit their own requirements.
Liquid strategies
These programmes trade a similar universe of models to the above programmes, but are constrained to the most liquid markets.
OUR PROGRAMMES
Unconventional & Unconstrained
We bring a scientific, empirical mind-set to investing. We only trade ideas and theories that we can test and prove. We act on evidence and strive to model and understand all aspects of the investment universe. But we are not academic theorists. We are practical scientists who apply our knowledge to producing something of financial value.
Science Applied to Finance
We believe that no data-set, market or model is out of bounds. We are constantly looking for systematic trading opportunities across the globe and actively encourage our people to find alpha in new places.
MAN AHL ON MAN INSTITUTE
Oxford-Man Institute
The Oxford-Man Institute ('OMI') is Man Group’s unique collaboration with the University of Oxford. Over the last decade, the OMI, part of the university’s Department of Engineering Science, has been conducting research into quantitative finance, and now focuses primarily on machine learning techniques and data analytics.
Located in the same building as Man AHL’s Oxford Research Lab, the OMI provides us with a direct connection to advanced machine learning research and allows for the fruitful cross-pollination of ideas between the investment and academic communities. Work done at the OMI, including in areas seemingly unrelated to investment – such as galaxy classification and measurement of the height of tides – has directly contributed to our investment methodologies.
At Man AHL, we incorporate RI in our investment process whilst recognising our fiduciary role and aiming to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns to our clients.
Our breadth of capabilities means that there is no single environmental, social and governance (‘ESG’) framework which can be applied uniformly across our programmes.
As such, we are constantly looking at innovative ways to incorporate RI into our systematic portfolios. We also integrate RI into the investment process via a proprietary RI exclusion list. This list supports the exclusion of 4 areas across our single name universe, namely: controversial arms and munitions, nuclear weapons, tobacco and companies that derive over 50% of their revenue from coal production. A RI-oriented proxy voting policy is applied to all holdings as we believe that it is our duty to use our voting rights to promote sound corporate governance practices at our investee companies on behalf of our clients.
Our responsibility extends further than the investment process to aspects such as stewardship and diversity. For example, a diverse workforce allows us to have a range of academic and technical expertise, fostering an inclusive and innovative research environment which, we believe, ultimately benefits our investors.
Finally, Man AHL engages with the wider investment management community to discuss, critically evaluate and shape emerging best practice.
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We truly believe that advanced quantitative trading strategies necessitate robust technology at all stages; from market data acquisition and initial research through to model implementation and trade execution. We believe this primary focus enables our scientific models to move from concept through back-testing and into production trading with minimum overhead and maximum efficiency.
Having a common programming language and unified codebase promotes collaborative and stimulating working practices. Our hardware, tools and software engineering practices ensure high levels of productivity, quality and the necessary agility to quickly meet the needs of a dynamic business.
In Execution technology, our core goal is to ensure best execution for our clients. As we fundamentally consider that competition is key to this, we have multiple trading routes; AHL-developed algorithms, third-party algorithms and a manual trading desk. We continually enforce rigorous competition between these routes in an effort to ensure that we are always trading optimally.
Through a thoughtful combination of specialised hardware, proprietary software, and heavy investment in open-source technology we have created a technology platform that greatly increases research velocity and satisfaction, with the intent of ultimately benefiting our clients.
Data
Man’s Data Science group is a critical backbone within the organization. Having a common data platform encourages cross group collaboration and innovative thinking to find unique insights in data. We look beyond the traditional landscape to develop creative solutions for a variety of complex investment thesis. Data specialists collaborate with our researchers to guide new ideas, investment strategies, and differentiated alpha decisions for the benefit of our clients.
Technology at Man Group
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