ABOUT

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Science, technology, and experience define our approach to solving for value across a multidimensional space. 

 

Our name is an allusion to our concise, effective, and uncluttered approach to investing. Eigenvector Capital approaches value investing systematically.  Using our proprietary analytical framework, we created a defined process to identify value investing opportunities in US-listed stocks.

 

INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY

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Value investing is our focus. Like all value investors, we source our ideas through the rigorous examination of fundamental data.

In systematic investing, we can ensure that we follow the identical investing process every day by adhering to rules that we have backtested in historical databases.

 


WHY SYSTEMATIC INVESTING

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Systematic investing answers the questions a successful discretionary manager must ask with unambiguous rules that we have tested to ensure they add value.

We source our ideas as a value investor would because academic research has confirmed what we have experienced in managing a discretionary portfolio: over time, value stocks outperform the broader market.

 


STRENGTH OF PROCESS

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For factors to be useful in investing, we demand that they be: simple, limited, robust, and rational.

Our factors are value-oriented and grounded in fundamentals. We express these underlying fundamental factors rigorously and we use them in our algorithms in a proprietary way. 

 


INVESTMENT PROCESS

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We distill what we know about a company into numerical factors so we can compare and rank all companies.

Our proprietary research shows that value investing only works because hidden in the mix of value stocks are true “bargains” whose full performance is obscured by the “value traps.” Our research focus is to find ways to consistently distinguish between the two.

 


TEAM

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Nathan Rex, Ph.D., CFA

Chief Investment Officer & Managing Member

Nathan Rex is the Chief Investment Officer and Managing Member of Eigenvector Capital, a firm focused on systematic value investing.Before founding the firm, Dr. Rex managed the same systematic strategies while serving as CIO of TRQ Analytics, the internal fund of the family office now named Kokino. From 2004 to 2011, Dr. Rex was Vice President of Troy Capital, the forerunner of Kokino, where he assisted the CIO of the family office and co-managed a discretionary long-only equity portfolio. Prior to joining Troy Capital, Dr. Rex worked as a management consultant with Mars & Co in Greenwich, CT. Dr. Rex received a Ph.D. in physics from Yale University in 2001 where he successfully demonstrated the first semiconductor laser based on a chaotic mode in his dissertation: Regular and Chaotic Orbit Gallium Nitride Microcavity Lasers. He graduated from Yale in 1998 with an MS in Physics and in 1996 summa cum laude from the University of Utah with a BS in Physics (College of Science Valedictorian). In 2007, he passed the Chartered Financial Analyst Level III exam. 


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Sean Ballard

Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner

Sean Ballard is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner of Eigenvector Capital, a firm focused on systematic value investing. Prior to founding Eigenvector, Mr. Ballard was a Director at Palestra Capital Management, which he joined prior to its launch in 2012. Preceding Palestra, Mr. Ballard was Director of Business Development for Titan Capital Group, a volatility-focused hedge fund, from 2008 to 2012 where he was responsible for global marketing and investor relations initiatives. Before Titan, Mr. Ballard worked at leading investment firms Lionstone Capital Management and Torrey Associates. From 2002 to 2006 he was a professional at Goldman Sachs in its Investment Management Division where he was responsible for private client portfolio asset allocation modeling and investment implementation. Mr. Ballard serves on the Business Affairs committee of the board of scientific publisher Annual Reviews. He also serves on the Finance Committee for the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, is the chairman of Menlo Park’s Community Crisis Management Advisory Board, and a volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America. He graduated with a BS in Economics from Brigham Young University.


Keith Danko

Senior Advisor

Keith Danko is a Senior Advisor to Eigenvector Capital. Mr. Danko has over two decades of experience building and managing businesses, much of it as a leader in the alternative assets industry. Most notably, he restructured and served as CEO and CIO of ACAM Advisors where from 2003 to 2007 he managed top-quartile fund of hedge funds portfolios for large institutional clients. During Mr. Danko's tenure at ACAM, the equity value of the firm increased 900%. Previously Mr. Danko served as CEO of CQS US for three years and was also a Partner at Titan Capital. At CQS he managed the launch of the US business, including SEC registration, built out the trading teams, and established the CQS brand and marketing effort in the Americas, raising assets under management in the difficult post-2008 environment. At Titan, he embarked upon a turnaround of the firm, including the development of the Titan Asia Fund and the Hong Kong office, working with Hong Kong, Singapore and Japanese investors and regulatory regimes. Mr. Danko began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he served as an Executive Director and headed international mortgage securities trading. He earned a BA from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard University and is a graduate of The Lawrenceville School. He has published numerous research pieces, including in 2005 the influential white paper, Portable Alpha: An Updated Perspective.


Alex Troy

Senior Advisor

Alex Troy is a Senior Advisor to Eigenvector Capital. Prior to Eigenvector's founding Mr. Troy was CEO of TRQ Analytics as well as a managing director of Brookside Equity Partners, a private equity firm. From 2009 to 2011 Mr. Troy served as CIO of Kokino, a family office. From 2002 to 2008 he was CEO of Troy Capital, a money management and financial consulting firm. Mr. Troy was a managing director at Perry Capital for nine years, overseeing its merger arbitrage portfolio, and practiced corporate law before becoming an investor. He received a BA in Economics from Yale College in 1981 and a JD from Harvard Law School in 1984.